


with our hands cupped like shovels

by shadowen



Series: soul meets body [3]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Awkward Phil, Consent Issues, Cunnilingus, Deaf Clint Barton, Domestic, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, First Time Together, Gender Dysphoria, Hurt/Comfort, Kid Fic, M/M, Nightmares, Past Child Abuse, Past Sexual Assault, Protective Phil, Scars, Trans Character, but there is also the comfort part, parenting, so that covers the hurt part, trans Clint, which is more adorable baby
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-04
Updated: 2014-10-04
Packaged: 2018-02-19 19:45:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2400647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadowen/pseuds/shadowen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The moment he realized he was in love with Clint was one of the worst moments of Phil’s life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	with our hands cupped like shovels

**Author's Note:**

> Infinite thanks to darkmagyk, weepingnaiad, and bendingwind for all of their help and to everyone who's been checking back and waiting for this installment. You know who you are. :)
> 
> Now onto the not fun part: **WARNINGS.** This story contains repeated, specific references to **child abuse, sexual assault** , and **transphobia**. It deals directly with issues of **PTSD** , and Clint experiences two brief episodes of complete **dissociation from reality**. There are serious **consent issues** , as Clint insists on participating in a sexual act he doesn't want, resulting in short-term trauma. There is an in-dialogue **description of a violent gang rape and its aftermath** , though both are described with only sparse details. If you're not sure about something or have questions, please ask me. I'm happy to discuss any triggers and help readers avoid sections of the story that might be difficult.

The moment he realized he was in love with Clint was one of the worst moments of Phil’s life. 

It felt like a betrayal, like it undermined all the trust Clint had placed in him and tarnished something that needed so desperately to stay clean. Clint’s youth and the seventeen-year difference between them made the whole thing seem sordid in a way that turned Phil’s stomach.

Clint had overturned Phil’s life in the best possible way, but being in love with him meant weeks of confusion and self-loathing, followed by weeks of silence and frustration, all mixed up with peace and contentment. Then Marian was born, and Phil knew with absolute certainty that he was fucked.

He looked at Clint now, sprawled on the floor amid drifts of demolished tissue paper, and had to remind himself that it was unbecoming of a senior agent to cry in front of guests, even out of happiness.

“Mia, honey, no. Hair is not a snack,” Clint chided, trying to help Kate disentangle herself from the baby, who had a fistful of Kate’s ponytail in her mouth.

“Oh, she’s fine,” Kate insisted. “A little extra slobber never hurt anybody. Did it, Mia?”

Despite Phil’s hesitation, the nickname had stuck, and baby Marian was now one-year-old Mia. “Wait until she tries to take a bite of your food. Then tell me how you feel about slobber,” Phil said, and Kate made a face.

“I think we’ve all eaten worse things than baby spit,” Hill put in. “This cake, for one.”

“The cake probably has baby spit in it, too,” Clint pointed out.

“No babies were involved in the baking of this cake,” Phil assured them. In honor of Mia’s first birthday, Phil had been given the task of providing the traditional birthday cake and had ambitiously decided to try making it from scratch. That was his first mistake. His second mistake was attempting to make a healthy, sugar-free cake suitable for baby consumption.

Mia loved it and proceeded to get crumbs and all-natural, fat-free icing on every inch of herself and everything she touched. The adults were all gracious enough to take one bite and politely set their plates aside.

“Are you sure?” Kate asked. “Because it kind of tastes like one of her diapers fell in the batter.” After being told that Phil was baking the cake, she had arrived with a box of gourmet baby cookies with pink hearts on them. Mia loved those, too.

The truth was that Mia would attempt to eat anything she could fit in her mouth and would _actually_ eat anything that was small enough for her to chew and swallow. Her newfound ability to stand with the aid of furniture only increased the range of potential snacks.

Phil had nightmares about calling poison control.

“What the hell possessed you to try baking?” Hill demanded around a bite of cookie.

“It’s a special occasion. I thought it would be more meaningful if I made it.” He was met with three blank stares, and he sighed. “Next year I’ll get one from the store. I promise.”

Apparently bored with Kate’s hair, Mia crawled toward Hill and held up her arms to be lifted onto the couch. “Pwease!”

Rather than picking up words like “up”, “down”, or “want”, Mia had learned that she could get nearly anything she wanted just by saying “please”. The rest of her vocabulary remained limited to the all-important “daddy” and “eat”, and Phil told himself not to be slighted that “poppa” was still forthcoming.

Obediently, Hill lifted Mia into her lap, laughing. “How’d you get so polite? I know you didn’t learn that from your daddy.”

“Daddy!” Mia repeated cheerfully.

“Hey!” Clint protested, and Kate tossed a wad of wrapping paper at his head.

“Shut up. You’re totally an unmannered heathen,” she said.

Clint threw the wad back at her. “Better than a spoiled brat.”

“Children,” Phil warned, and they both flashed him entirely unapologetic grins. As much as he loved Kate, he sometimes thought that introducing her to Clint would prove disastrous to the world in general. Though it did did give Clint an understanding audience for his impassioned archery screeds, and Kate seemed to fit in well with their small, patchwork family.

Hill was called away soon after, heavily suggesting that Phil should be in early the next morning to help deal with whatever crisis was developing and that Clint, with his brand new level one clearance, should tag along. Kate helped them clean up before she left and gave each member of the family a kiss on the cheek. Phil was pleasantly surprised to receive his.

“Happy birthday, princess,” she said quietly, handing the yawning Mia off to Clint. “Lets hope you can survive your dads for another year.”

“Hey!” Clint hissed, but Kate just blew him a kiss as she sauntered out the door.

After tense deliberation, they had decided that the one-year mark was the right time to move Mia into her own room, and the extra bedroom - ostensibly Phil’s room - had been converted into a peaceful toddler wonderland, all soothing colors and soft toys, with her crib standing at the foot of the spare bed. Clint had insisted on doing the redecorating himself, and Phil’s one request was that there be stars painted on the ceiling.

“When I was a kid...” he had started to explain, but Clint had shaken his head, smiling.

“You don’t have to say. I get it.”

So they laid her down beneath a splash of constellations, Piggy clutched in her arms, and Phil stayed standing beside her crib, murmuring softly and holding her delicate hand until she fell asleep. Then he joined Clint in the hallway and they shared a deep, exhausted sigh.

“Is it normal to feel like we’re, y’know...”

“Abandoning her to face the cold, dark night all by her tiny self?” Phil supplied, and Clint nodded. “Yes, I think that’s probably normal.”

“Okay, good.” Clint smiled. “You know, she wouldn’t even be here if it wasn’t for you.”

Phil raised an eyebrow. “Well, I think you contributed a little bit.”

“No, I mean, like, at all,” Clint said. “If it hadn’t been you, if SHIELD had sent someone else after me, I don’t think I would have come in.”

The thought of Clint and Mia out in the world alone made Phil’s stomach twist, and the thought of Clint _without_ Mia, having given her away or lost her entirely, was enough to make Phil reach for Clint’s hand and the reassurance of touch. There was only half a second of hesitation before Clint twisted his fingers in Phil’s and held on tight.

“You never did tell me how you knew who I was,” Phil said, and Clint’s smile turned sly.

“I followed you.”

Phil blinked. “Followed me? Where?”

“Everywhere.”

“For how long?”

Clint shrugged. “I dunno. A month?”

“A _month_?” Phil had been hunting him for nearly a year before Clint had finally confronted him, and a month before that... Phil could have kicked himself when it clicked in his head. “The dummy arrest in New Orleans. You had a look-alike get arrested under your name because you knew I would come check it out.”

Clint just grinned and turned on his heel, pulling Phil gently toward the other bedroom.

“You staked out the police station, then followed me to gather intel,” Phil went on. “And you finally came up to me in LA...”

“Because I’d seen enough to know who I was dealing with,” Clint told him.

“Mmhm, and who did you think you were dealing with?” Phil asked as Clint’s arms folded around him.

“A professional. A good man. Someone who’d at least give me a shot before you kicked me to the curb.” Clint kissed the corner of Phil’s mouth, and Phil could feel his smile. “Someone who looked damn sexy in a suit.”

Phil snorted. “You did not think that.”

“I totally did!” Clint insisted. “I mean, that wasn’t really a deciding factor, but I definitely thought it.”

“Uh huh. Sure you did.” Phil kept his hands on Clint’s waist and leaned into the touch as Clint sucked kisses along his jaw. “I thought you were gorgeous.” Clint huffed in disbelief, his breath hot against Phil’s throat. “I did. God, you were so beautiful.” He pulled back enough to brush a quick kiss across Clint’s lips. “You _are_ so beautiful.”

Clint rolled his eyes. “Yeah, tell me I’m a pretty girl. I fucking dare you.”

“No, no, I don’t mean like that. I mean beautiful like...” Phil faltered for a comparison. There was no figure in history who could compare to Clint. “Like Adonis beautiful. Like Greek god beautiful.” Clint raised an eyebrow. “Now you’re going to make fun of me.”

“You just told me I look like a Greek god,” Clint said. “You’re damn right I’m gonna make fun of you.”

“Not if I can make you forget I said that.” Phil backed slowly toward the bed, careful not to push or to give away how hard his heart was pounding. All his senses were filled up with the touch and smell of Clint, and he could have drowned in the overwhelming feeling of _finally_.

“And how are you gonna do that?” Clint’s fingers were warm as they crept up under the hem of Phil’s shirt.

“I have a few ideas.” He had dozens of ideas. He could have listed them alphabetically, categorically, and in order of priority.

Clint paused and gave Phil an uncertain look. “So we’re really gonna...? I mean, I figured we would, but...”

“I... Is that...? There wasn’t exactly a _plan_ , but I thought...” Phil took a step back, leaving just his hands resting on Clint’s sides. “If you don’t want to...”

“I do,” Clint said quickly. “I just... I guess I don’t really know what I’m supposed to do.”

“You’re doing pretty well, so far,” Phil said, but something in Clint’s expression made him hesitate. “Have you ever had sex?” Before Clint could say something snarky, he clarified, “ _Consensual_ sex.”

Clint’s brow furrowed. “Define consensual.”

Phil wanted to kill them, all of them, it didn’t matter how many. He wanted to tear apart each and every shit-eating monster that had ever touched Clint with anything less than divine reverence. “So that’s a _no_ , then.”

“I mean, a couple of times, I guess.” Looking away, Clint muttered, “Sorry. Guess that’s not real sexy.”

“That’s... No, please, look at me.” 

Slowly, Clint raised his eyes, and there was defiance burning behind the doubt, a challenge that Phil barely knew how to answer.

“ _Sexy_ has nothing to do with it.” Phil took a deep breath. “If you don’t honestly, absolutely want to do this, then we won’t. Period.”

Clint frowned. “You mean right now or, like, ever?”

“Either way,” Phil said. “If you want to wait, we’ll wait. If you decide you don’t want to have sex at all, then I won’t ask again.”

“You could do that?” Clint asked, clearly skeptical. “You could be with somebody you didn’t... who couldn’t...?”

“Yes,” Phil answered without hesitation. “For you, yes.” Clint seemed to be chewing on that, so Phil went on, “I’m going to get ready for bed. Take a minute and figure out what you want right now. Not overall or for forever, just right this second, and you let me know. Okay?”

After a moment, Clint nodded, and Phil forced himself to let go of Clint’s waist and go about his bedtime routine as if it was any other night. Soon, Clint followed suit, and they fell into the familiar shuffle between bathroom and bedroom until Phil slid between the cool sheets, expecting Clint to be close behind as always. Instead, Clint sat cross-legged on top of the bed clothes, his face serious and thoughtful.

"So what if there's, y'know, some stuff I wanna do and some stuff that's... that I don't."

"Anything you don't want is off limits. Period," Phil assured him. He hesitated, and Phil prompted gently, "Though it would help if you can tell me what those things are."

Clint shifted uncomfortably, picking at a loose thread on the bedspread. "I, um, I think maybe I don't want anything, uh, y'know, inside me."

Phil nodded. "Okay."

"Okay?" Clint frowned. "That's it? Just _okay_?"

Phil sighed and sat up in bed, resting his elbows on his knees. "One day, you're going to stop being surprised at being shown basic respect."

Clint flushed, but he didn't drop his eyes. "One day, you're going to push back instead of just saying _okay_."

"Not today. Not about this." Smiling, Phil added, "Honestly, I usually prefer being pushed around to pushing back." Clint blinked, and Phil felt a flush of his own take over his face. "I mean... That is... just in a, you know, in a sexual... context."

Clint’s eyebrows went up. "You want me to push you around?"

"Yes?"

Whatever Phil expected to happen next, it wasn't for Clint to slide forward and pin him gently to the bed, straddling his hips with a bright, hungry grin. "Like this?"

Phil swallowed. "Yeah, I'd say you're, uh, definitely on the right track there."

Clint's grin widened, and he leaned down to catch Phil's mouth in a deep, searing kiss. Phil arched into him, letting his hands trail along Clint's sides. Clint stretched out on top of him, and the kiss became lazy, slow and languid, as if he wanted to drink the pleasure out of Phil's mouth. His teeth scraped over Phil's bottom lip, and Phil sucked in a sharp breath.

Clint drew back enough that Phil could see his smile, soft and relaxed. "Good?"

Phil brought up one hand to brush gently along Clint's jaw and murmured, "Perfect."

***

"You seem distracted."

Clint shook his head, snapping back to the present. "Huh?"

Hill gave him a bemused look and closed the file in front of her. "Alright. The mission doesn't run for another week,and you know the op specs backward and forward. So let's call it quits on the briefing, and you can tell me what's on your mind."

Clint huffed. "Thought you were my SO, not my therapist."

"Well, you do need both, but right now I'm neither. I'm your friend," she said, resting her chin on one hand. "What's up?"

There were so many things crashing around his head that Clint wouldn't have known where to start even if he'd wanted to talk about it, which he didn't. "That what friends do? Poke at each other's personal shit?" he grumbled.

"You know me. I'm nosey," Hill replied evenly. After a moment, she asked, "How's the rugrat? I hear she's walking now."

By _hear_ , of course, she meant that Coulson had sent her step-by-step photos and several very excited emails, because Coulson had been sending photos and excited emails to everyone with the appropriate clearance level for the past two weeks. Clint had been out of contact at the time and hadn't known until he got home and Mia came toddling toward him. She couldn't quite make the distance and had fallen hard on the floor, bursting into tears, and Clint had been too stunned to move.

"Yeah, she's working on it," he said. "She can get just far enough to work up some speed and then faceplant."

Hill snorted, then waved apologetically. "Sorry, sorry. I shouldn't laugh. Children falling down is not funny." Clint gave her a look, and she let out another laugh. "Okay, it's a little funny."

It would have been hilarious if Mia hadn't immediately started crying after every fall, like she was so disappointed in herself for not making it. She was trying so hard, and it tied Clint's stomach in knots to watch. "Coulson thinks it's the best thing ever," he told Hill. "Anytime she even starts to stand up, he's right there going, 'Come on. You can do it. Walk to poppa.' It's nuts."

Hill shrugged. "He's excited. Doesn't sound like you are, though."

Clint might have been excited if he could have wrapped her up in thick sweaters, with knee pads, elbow pads, ankle braces, and a helmet. God help them all if she ever learned to climb. "I'm glad she's doing good."

Hill made a little hum, like she saw directly through Clint's bullshit, but she didn't comment. "And how's hot dad sex?"

Clint nearly choked and felt himself blush right up to his hairline. "Jesus fuck. Why the fuck would you ask me that?"

"Because I'm curious, and because Coulson's last relationship was so long-distance, they were more like pen pals with occasional bouts of sex," she said lightly. "And I can't ask him, because he gets all flustered and talks about how _amazing_ and _wonderful_ you are. It's adorable, but also disgusting."

"He's... It's... good. We're good. He's great," Clint faltered, the heat on his face rising.

"Uh huh. So what does 'good' look like in the Clint Barton Dictionary of Sex?"

"Mutual orgasms and enthusiasm?"

Hill raised an eyebrow. "Has anyone ever told you that you have really low standards?"

"Daily." Clint ran a hand through his hair. "I mean, what do you want me to say? He's smart and patient and funny. He always knows what to do. He puts up with all my shit. He's pretty much the ultimate dad. He's fucking perfect."

"He's not, actually, but I see your point." Casually, as if it wasn't at all important, Hill asked, "Do you love him?"

Clint had his mouth open before he realized that he didn't have an answer. "I... I don't know." _Don't know if I can_. "I think so. Maybe."

She gave him a sympathetic look. "You might wanna get that figured out."

"Yeah," Clint sighed. "Yeah, I know."

Theoretically, Clint knew that sex was supposed to be good, that it was something people did to have fun and to make each other feel good, not just out of need or desperation, but he didn't understand it in practice until Phil touched him in just the right way to make him see stars. It was, without a doubt, the best discovery of his life, and it just kept getting better, even limited to just dry humping and hand jobs.

The fact that his nightmares had gotten worse and woke him up screaming more nights than not seemed like a fair price. Mostly.

Tonight was going squarely in the _Worth It_ column.

If he had thought about it, Clint might have guessed that he would enjoy being on top and in control, but he couldn’t have anticipated the heady pleasure of having Phil underneath, arching and grinding against him, breathless and begging. Hearing aids were cumbersome for this kind of exercise, so Clint couldn’t hear the words, but _yes_ , _please_ , and _just like that_ had their own texture and taste that he could understand without sound.

Suddenly, Phil tensed and turned toward the nightstand where the baby monitor had begun to flash and buzz.

Clint groaned. “Maybe she’ll stop.” The obnoxious flashing continued, and he sighed.

Phil shifted so that they were directly face to face. “I can get her.”

“No, it’s my turn.” Clint carefully levered himself up, but a tug on his shirt sleeve stopped him before he could stand. He looked back to find Phil watching him with a warm, hazy smile.

“Come here,” Phil said, and Clint offered no resistance as he was pulled down into a hot, wet kiss. The ache between his legs throbbed, overwhelming in its newness and intensity, and it was all he could do not to shove a hand down his shorts.

With effort, he pulled away, licking the taste of Phil from his lips. “Two seconds,” he promised, and Phil just grinned happily, fingers trailing down Clint’s arm as he rose. Clint shivered and thought maybe he was starting to understand this whole sex-and-dating thing.

Mia was sitting up in her crib, her small face shadowed by the bars and the dim night light. She waved her arms emphatically as Clint came in, reaching toward the empty bed, and Clint immediately saw the cause of her distress: Piggy was lying on its side on the corner of the bed, set down and forgotten at bedtime.

“Aw, geez, kid. I’m sorry,” Clint told her softly, picking up the stuffed animal and delivering it into her grasping hands. Some dad he was, forgetting the one thing she absolutely needed to sleep. “Is that better?”

Mia hugged Piggy to her chest and stared up at Clint with big, shining eyes as her little mouth relaxed into whimpers instead of full-blown cries. She made the shape of words Clint had learned to recognise as, “Daddy please.”

He suspected that the _please_ was mostly an expression of the general need to feel better, but it still cut into Clint’s gut like a heavy knife. If he’d known what she wanted, he would have found a way to give it to her, whatever the cost. “It’s okay, baby girl. I’m right here. You can go back to sleep.”

“Daddy please,” she whined again, but she lay down as he coaxed her gently. Her hand had grown big enough to reach all the way around two of his fingers, but she could have held him in place with an eyelash. “Daddy please.”

“Shh. It’s okay. I’m all yours.” He ran the pad of his thumb along the edge of her hand, soothing as her dark eyes drifted closed. “All yours. Always and forever.”

Her lips moved in one last sleepy murmur, then her grip on his fingers relaxed, and the soft rise and fall of her chest dropped into a slow, even rhythm. Clint didn’t know how long he stood there, staring at the tiny wrinkles on her elbow and the perfect upturn of her nose. 

Mia didn’t look anything like him, but she had somehow inherited the cherubic button nose he’d had as a kid. His nose had been one of many small, feminine features that had made him hate his reflection even more, and he remembered being pleased the first time it was broken because his face would never look sweet and delicate again.

If anyone ever damaged any part of Mia’s perfect face, there wouldn’t be enough pieces of them left to bury.

Finally, he forced himself away from her crib and padded back into the other bedroom, where Phil was propped up against the pillows, brow furrowed in thought. Clint had to marvel at a world in which he could leave the room of someone who loved him and walk just across the hall to someone _else_ who loved him. One day maybe the universe would claim its due for giving him that privilege, but not yet, not tonight.

“We forgot Piggy,” Clint explained, ducking his head in the hope that his moment of sentimentality would go unnoticed.

Phil smiled as Clint climbed back into bed, and he crooked a finger over his ear. Frowning, Clint retrieved his hearing aids from the nightstand. “Everything okay?”

“What? Oh. No. I mean, yes, everything’s fine, I just...” Phil scratched at the back of his neck, the tips of his ears turning pink. His erection had flagged, but the front of his shorts was still obviously raised in a way that made Clint want to rub his face on it. “It’s just that there’s, um, there’s something I’d like to... to try, and I want to ask your permission.”

Clint tilted his head and ignored the reflexive spike of cold across his nerves. “Um. Okay.”

“I couldn’t really figure out the sign for it, and I’m not sure the word would... I mean, I’m sure the euphemisms would carry, but...” Phil shook his head. “Anyway, I was wondering, or really hoping, that I could, um... Can I... May I please give you cunnilingus?”

Despite Phil’s precautions to make his request clear, it took a moment for the meaning to register in Clint’s head. “Wait. What?”

“It means...”

“I know what _cunnilingus_ means, asshole.” Clint said. “But isn’t it, like, really gross?”

“Not especially. Unless you have an infection I don’t know about.” Phil took a deep breath. “If you... It’s not important, I just... I’d really like to eat you out. Please. If you don’t mind.”

Clint shifted, feeling the small damp spot in the seam of his shorts. He could remember the circus hands talking, words and phrases he could barely follow, filthy jokes about hair and fish and tricks for getting out of it. They’d made it seem like a dirty chore, not something to seek out for their own pleasure. “You don’t have to do that,” he told Phil. “I mean, I’m not gonna... You don’t have to do something you don’t wanna just ‘cause I might like it.”

Phil frowned. “I want to do it _because_ you’ll like it, and because _I_ like it. I...” The flush on his face darkened. “I’ve only been with... with a few partners who had that anatomy, and it’s been a while, so I’m out of practice. But I honestly enjoyed, you know, going down on them.” He cleared his throat, squaring his shoulders like he was prepared to face the consequences of his declaration. “I also enjoy giving fellatio.”

Clint didn’t mean to laugh. He really didn’t, but Phil’s earnest awkwardness never failed to charm him. Out in the world, Phil was Agent Coulson, Stoic Badass, but here in their home, in their bedroom, he was just a big, sappy dork who got tongue-tied talking about sex.

“Are you saying you wanna suck my cock?” Clint teased.

Still blushing, Phil gave him a sly smile. “I’m saying I want to lick your pussy until your knees are shaking and you never want to let me up again.”

Also on the list of things Clint had only understood in theory: dirty talk. Suddenly, its appeal made a whole lot of sense. He swallowed hard. “Y-yeah. Okay. We can try that.”

If he had been hesitant, Phil's grin of pure excitement helped to settle his nerves, and Clint couldn't help but smile back. "Would you, um, lie back against the pillows, please?" Phil asked, and Clint shifted obediently as Phil resituated himself between Clint's knees. "I... I need to take off your shorts. Is that alright?"

In their slow exploration, Clint had always managed to avoid removing any clothes, though the lack of nudity had never seemed to hamper Phil's ability to introduce new and wonderful sensations to Clint's carefully covered body. Crossing that line, allowing Phil to see a fraction of what he tried so hard to hide, felt heavy and ominous. Setting his jaw, Clint lifted his legs and stripped off his shorts, flinging them aside before he could think twice. When he settled back, he braced his heels on the bed and let his knees rest against Phil's sides, his damp cunt now exposed and unprotected.

Instead of drifting to the newly revealed parts, Phil's gaze stayed fixed on Clint's face with a stare that was at once searching and adoring. Slowly, Phil leaned forward, covering Clint up and pressing his thighs further apart, and gave Clint a gentle, breathless kiss. "I love you so much," he murmured, as if that simple fact amazed him.

Clint wanted so badly to answer in kind, whether it was true or not, that he got as far as starting the sentence. "I..."

Phil kissed him again, harder and with greater need, cutting off Clint's reply. His kisses trailed away down the side of Clint's neck, the touch becoming light and hot as it drifted over the t-shirt, his broad calloused hands ran in circles over Clint's hips. He was still speaking, whispering against Clint's skin, but the words didn't matter, just the movement of his mouth and breath and his steady downward travelling.

Finally, his lips brushed the coarse cluster of hair between Clint's legs, and he paused, looking up as if for reassurance. Clint made himself breathe in deep, drinking in the sight of Phil's handsome face framed between his thighs. After a moment, Clint nodded, and Phil kept their eyes locked together as he spread the flesh apart with his fingers and gave a brief, tentative swipe of his tongue.

It was like a match, struck suddenly and flaring up in a dark room, turning all sensation into fire. Clint gasped, and Phil paused just long enough to flash him a smug smile before turning all his attention toward the task of driving Clint crazy. 

After one minute, Clint stopped trying to follow what exactly Phil was doing. After two, he stopped keeping track of anything but the pleasure that rolled over him with every movement of Phil’s mouth. The third minute was a blur, and after four minutes he was coming too hard to care.

Phil hauled himself up to stretch out beside Clint and give him a hard, clumsy kiss that tasted salty and sour and perfect. Clint felt like he had dissolved into a puddle of good feelings and couldn’t do much more than smile and part his lips.

After a moment of heavy breathing and slowing pulses, Phil asked, “Conclusion?” 

Clint managed to give him a wobbly thumbs-up. “Five stars. Excellent service. Would come again.”

“I’ll make you a reservation for tomorrow,” Phil murmured, yawning. With a snort, he added, “Guess this means I’ll be eating out every night.”

Clint reached over to slap him lightly on the shoulder. “Dork.”

Phil poked him in the side. “Don’t make fun of the person giving you orgasms. It’s not p-” He paused to yawn again. “Not polite.”

“Oh well excuse me.” Clint rolled onto his side so that he and Phil were face to face on the pillow. “Do you need to...?”

“What? Oh. No, I’m... I’m good. I had a free hand,” Phil assured him. Clint raised an eyebrow, and the tips of Phil’s ears turned pink. “I did tell you I like doing that.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t think you meant, y’know, _like_ like."

"Honestly, I think I just like _you_. Everything else is a bonus," Phil said, absolutely serious.

Clint blinked back at him, then made a face. “You are such a fucking loser.”

“Yup,” Phil agreed, nuzzling into Clint’s shoulder with a sleepy sigh.

Just for a moment, Clint closed his eyes and let himself drift in the contentment of afterglow, in the warmth of Phil at his side, in the comfort of a soft bed, and the peace in knowing that his daughter was safely sleeping across the hall. The moment passed. “Hey.” He elbowed Phil gently, but Phil just gave a vague mumbled and burrowed in deeper. “Hey. Are you gonna clean up or just sleep with come in your underwear?”

Phil grumbled something that Clint suspected was sarcastic, but he eventually rolled away with a grunt and shambled toward the bathroom. Clint watched him go, watched the crops of greying hair and the pale patches of scars shift over the movement of lean muscle, and he wondered, not for the first time, what the hell Phil could possibly want with him. It had been a long time since Clint had thought of himself as a kid, but next to Phil, with his laugh lines and reading glasses and endless well of patient understanding, Clint felt like an errant child with bare feet and filthy hands. What good could that be for a man who’d spent his entire adult life saving the world?

By the time Phil came back, Clint had wiped himself down with a tissue and crawled under the covers with a fresh pair of shorts. He didn’t expect to sleep much, but almost as soon as Phil settled in beside him, face tucked against Clint’s shoulder and an arm slung around his waist, he found his eyes drifting quietly closed.

Later, he would swear he didn’t remember the nightmare, but that was a flat-out lie. He remembered every horrible detail with vivid clarity, right up to the moment he fell off the bed, thrashing in a tangle of sheets. What he didn’t remember was anything that happened after he woke up, aside from warm arms around him and an unknown interval of crying so hard that his stomach ached.

In the morning, he yawned and smiled and went to wake up Mia. If Phil smiled back a little slowly and a little sadly, Clint could pretend not to notice.

***

During the whirlwind of Clint’s initial induction into SHIELD, the attending doctor had taken Phil aside and explained, quietly and frankly, that the medical exam had found evidence of sustained abuse and violent sexual assault. She had recommended a therapist on staff, and Phil, being the thorough and attentive supervising officer that he was, had immediately added a series of counseling sessions to Clint’s orientation schedule. After the required meetings ended, Clint had insisted he was finished with them, and the therapist had reluctantly admitted that Clint seemed at least functionally well-adjusted, all things considered.

After more than a year of sharing a home with Clint and his demons, Phil was beginning to think he should have pressed the issue while he still had the authority. The suggestion would be different coming from... whatever exactly he was to Clint now, so he kept his peace through the quiet breakdowns and the screaming nightmares and read everything he could find on trauma recovery.

The apartment was quiet when he came home, peaceful in a way that life with a toddler rarely afforded, and Phil let out a long sigh of relief. Quiet meant that Clint and Mia were either out or napping, which gave Phil a few rare minutes to himself. 

He hummed softly as he toed off his shoes and stashed his gun and badge in the hiding place in the foyer wall. Pulling off his jacket and tie, he went to put them away and found both bedrooms empty. The simple explanation was that Clint and Mia had gone out to the store or for a walk, but then Phil saw that the bathroom door was closed, a small seam of light shining beneath it.

Coming closer, he could hear steady murmuring, muffled and indistinct through the door. He knocked lightly, but there was no answer. “Clint?” he called, a useless attempt since Clint would have taken out his hearing aids to shower or to bathe Mia.

Phil would have let it be, but he wanted to at least let Clint know he was home. Pushing open the door, he was surprised when it thumped against an obstacle and stopped. With a strange tightness in his stomach, Phil shouldered through the opening enough to see Clint sitting back against the bathtub with Mia wrapped up tightly in a large towel, fast asleep in his arms.

Clint was staring at the ground in front of him, barely blinking, his eyes were vacant and unseeing. His mouth was moving, mumbling so softly that Phil couldn’t make out the words until he had pushed past the towel rack that had fallen to block the door and crouched down beside Clint.

“I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry,” was pouring out of Clint like a rocky stream, hoarse and meaningless.

“Clint?” Phil prompted, waving his hand through Clint’s line of sight, but it was Mia who blinked awake. It wasn’t until she gave him a small, bleary grin that he saw the red mark swelling on her face and the blood on the edge of the towel.

“Pwease,” she chirped sleepily. She still hadn’t managed _poppa_ , but she at least recognized him as provider.

“I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry,” Clint’s litany went on. Mia squirmed in his arms, but Clint just held on tighter, squeezing her close. “I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry.”

“Jesus Christ. _Clint_.” Phil tugged carefully at the towel, trying to pry Mia free, but Clint’s grip tightened.

Mia squeaked in alarm, and Clint just kept murmuring, “I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry,” like he couldn’t make himself stop, like there was nothing left of him but apologies.

“Daddy pwease!” Mia pushed ineffectively at his chest, and Clint never paused.

“I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry...”

Phil spent enough time with combat veterans to know that forcing Mia away from him would do more harm than good, and he couldn’t talk Clint out of it if Clint could hear him. Slowly, he put out a hand and laid it on Clint’s shoulder, shaking gently. “Clint, please.”

“I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry...”

“Daddy! Daddy! Pwease!” Mia struggled harder, but Clint’s grip stayed tight.

“It’s okay, Mia. Daddy’s going to be fine,” Phil soothed, running one hand softly over her wispy red curls to calm her. He lifted his other hand to cup Clint’s face, smoothing his his thumb in slow circles across Clint’s temple. 

There was a hitch in Clint’s breath. Slowly, the hoarse refrain trailed away into ragged breathing. Carefully, Phil pushed just hard enough to jostle Clint’s head, and Clint blinked, his vague blue stare fading back into the present.

“Clint?”

Clint blinked again and raised his eyes to Phil’s, still hazy and confused. His mouth moved as if he couldn’t remember how to make words.

“Daddy daddy daddy!” Mia insisted, shoving at him and squirming.

He looked down at her, and his initial frown transformed into a grimace of horror. When he looked back to Phil, his eyes were wide and wet. “I didn’t... It was an accident. I didn’t mean to.”

“It’s alright,” Phil assured him. He doubted Clint was catching all the words, so he took his hands away and slowly signed _safe_. Clint stared back at him blankly, then nodded once, jaw tight. Phil gestured for him to hand over Mia, and Clint let go so quickly that she dropped into his lap with a grunt.

“Daddy!” she scolded, turning toward Phil with upraised arms. “Pwease pwease!”

Phil scooped her up and carried her into her bedroom, speaking softly, “It’s okay, baby girl. You’re okay.”

When he set her down on the spare bed, she put her tiny hands to the red mark on her face, scowling. “Pwease!”

“Oh, darling. Does that hurt?” He tilted her head gently to examine the small, tender lump. There would be a bruise, and it looked like her bottom lip might have been cut. Otherwise, she appeared to be more irritated than in pain. “I bet I can make it feel better. Let’s get you dressed, and then we’ll have some juice, okay?”

Whatever happened had apparently occurred in the middle of bathtime, judging by the residue of shampoo that had dried in Mia’s hair. Phil toweled it out as best he could and slipped her into a set of soft purple pajamas, then carried her into the kitchen where she slurped contentedly on her sippy cup while he pressed a toddler-sized ice pack gently against her cheek.

It made him sick to leave Clint alone for so long, but Mia had to come first. Mia always came first.

When she finished her juice and started to duck away from the ice pack, grumbling impatiently, Phil acquiesced and deposited her in her play-pen-slash-castle with the large plush eagle that Fury had sent for her birthday.

“I’m going to go help your daddy, okay?” he said. She gave him a vague smile and went back to making the eagle flap its fuzzy wings. Phil had to tear himself away to keep from watching her play for hours and to keep from staring at the red swelling of her first bruise.

Clint was still in the bathroom, cleaning up the minor chaos. He had put on his hearing aids, but he still jumped when Phil opened the door. His eyes were red-rimmed and haunted. “Is she...?”

“She’s fine. Just a little bump,” Phil told him, but the assurance did nothing to ease the tense furrows in Clint’s brow.

“It was an accident,” he murmured. “She was... I looked away for a second, and she tried to climb out of the tub. I grabbed her, but she slipped, and... God, she was crying and bleeding, and it looked like I hit her. I might as well have hit her.”

“ _No_ ,” Phil said sharply. “You would never hurt her. Ever.”

“Not on purpose, but it’s like I’m gonna hurt her no matter what I do, and I can’t...” Clint shook his head, his voice thick and quiet. “I just saw that bruise, and it was like looking in a mirror when I was a kid, all the bruises I had like that. Couldn’t handle seeing that on her.”

Understanding dropped into Phil’s mind like a landslide. “Clint... Look at me, please.” He didn’t look up, but he paused. “How many times did you fall down as a kid?” At that, Clint’s eyes snapped up. “I mean actually, honestly fall down. You’re running and you trip, you crash your bike, stub your toe on the table, bump into a doorframe.” He paused, and Clint looked away, scowling. “How often do you think that happened when you were just learning to walk? Before you had the coordination to keep from running into everything?”

Clint gave a low snort. “Still do that.”

“Well, you do have many things in common with small children,” Phil teased, and he was relieved when it earned him the corner of a fractured smile. “The point is...”

“Point is kids get hurt. Accidents happen. I get it.” Clint threw the used towel into the hamper with unnecessary force. One corner hung over the side, a spot of blood on the edge. “Not my fault she got hurt, but I just... I just freaked out, okay? No big deal. Won’t happen again.”

Phil thought that freaking out would have been taking her to the hospital for x-rays. A dissociative episode was something else entirely. He didn’t say so, just remarked as neutrally as he could, “It seems like you’ve been freaking out a lot lately.”

Clint froze, just for a second, then shouldered past Phil into the hall. “Just stress. The kid, the job, all that stuff. Probably did some freaking out yourself when you joined up.”

“I certainly did,” Phil admitted, following Clint into the bedroom. He’d joined SHIELD straight out of high school, fresh from his mother’s funeral, young and raw and completely unequipped to cope with his new reality. Clint knew that, or at least knew the facts, but he didn’t know the whole story. “I... spent some time talking to someone, working through some of the... the difficulties I was having. It helped.”

Clint turned away as he stripped off his wet shirt, but he kept his head turned enough to catch what Phil was saying. The scars on his back and shoulders crisscrossed in a map of terrible landmarks, cut off abruptly by the worn white edge of his binder. “I don’t need a shrink,” he said sharply.

“I’m not saying that you do,” Phil replied, treading carefully. “I’m saying I’ve found the occasional counselling session to be helpful, and it might be w-”

“No,” Clint cut him off. “Don’t need it. Don’t want it.”

Phil swallowed a sigh. “I just think th-”

“I’m not crazy!” Clint snapped. Still facing away, he tugged off his binder and quickly slipped on a clean, oversized t-shirt, and Phil though distantly that that was the most he had ever seen of Clint’s skin. “There’s a lot of shit wrong with me. I know that,” Clint went on. “But it’s nothing they can fix, and it’s nothing I can’t handle. I’m not some kinda psycho.”

“Neither am I,” Phil pointed out calmly.

“Yeah, well, you’re not a freak, either,” Clint shot back, and Phil flinched. “Normal people have a rough time, they talk about their fucking feelings, and they get better. Me? I don’t get better. I just hold on tight and hope like hell to break even.”

Phil wanted to ask if that was enough, but he supposed, for most of Clint’s life, it had to be. Instead, he asked softly, “Are you? Breaking even, I mean.”

There was a long pause as Clint changed out of his damp jeans and boxers and into a pair of sleep pants, all without baring more than his legs. Finally, he answered with false lightness, “Sure. Most days. I mean, I’ve got a good job, a perfect kid, and a hot boyfriend. I’m doing okay, right?”

Before Phil could even being to bring up the flaws in that logic, Clint had breezed out of the bedroom and into the living room, and Phil could hear him cooing sweetly at Mia and her answering babble of delight. 

Finally allowing himself a deep sigh, Phil flopped gracelessly down onto the bed, exhausted to his bones and aching with an emptiness he couldn’t place. Clearly Clint wanted the topic dropped, and Phil knew when he’d lost an argument. Even so, he had never been one to admit defeat, and Clint’s peace of mind, whatever the cure or the cost, was worth fighting for.

***

The first time Clint told a teacher, in no uncertain terms, that he was a boy, his parents got a phone call from the principal, and they took him to the doctor, who assured them it was a phase and suggested buying him more dresses. His mother made him a pretty yellow sundress out of an old skirt, and his father gave him an intensive preview of what would happen if he didn't straighten up.

Clint didn't appreciate the irony of that phrasing until _much_ later.

The SHIELD therapist had been nice enough, certainly nicer than any of the doctors, clergy, and various experts that his parents, teachers, and social workers had foisted on him as a kid. That didn't mean Clint had any interest in _talking to someone_ , as Phil suggested, even if the suggestion itself felt like evidence that Clint's grip on himself was slipping. More to the point, Phil had _seen_ the slip and seemed to be uncovering more and more of the cracks beneath Clint's carefully cast surface. Being too broken to fix was one thing, but having Phil know the extent of his brokenness was different.

If Phil thought he was crazy, then Clint just had to be Not Crazy. He had to be so Not Crazy that the subject of therapy would never be brought up again. Simple.

Or at least, it started out simple.

His first action as a Not Crazy person was finally agreeing to let Mia join the official SHIELD daycare group. Up to that point, the only people he had ever left her alone with were Phil, Kate, and Hill. That he trusted Phil and Hill went without saying, and Kate had more than proven herself as a caretaker. Everyone else was subject to deep suspicion and not allowed anywhere near his little girl.

When he mentioned it, Phil stared back at him blankly. "Really? Are you sure?"

Clint shrugged. "She should be around other kids. Besides, Kate's not gonna want to be a babysitter forever. She's too good for that."

There was a long moment of silence, and Clint started to think maybe he'd oversold it. He resisted the impulse to ask, _Normal people send their kids to daycare, right?_

Finally, Phil just said, "Okay. I'll bring her in tomorrow and fill out the paperwork."

Clint was suddenly glad he had mission prep in the morning. Filing forms to hand his daughter into the care of strangers was a little more Not Crazy than he was prepared for. He smiled and hoped his face didn't look as tight and sick as his stomach felt. "Awesome," was all he could think of to say.

Phil gave him an odd look, but that was all.

The sudden bursts of terror and the conviction that Mia was in immediate, horrible danger decreased in frequency after a week or so. Eventually, he got down to once a day, and he managed to make it through three full missions, keeping his freak-outs contained and unnoticed.

The second item on the Not Crazy agenda was chipping in with the housework, historically a weak point in Clint's skillset. He did the dishes every night that he was home to do them. He did three whole loads of laundry and even remembered to use the fancy fabric softener that was supposed to be better for Mia’s delicate baby skin. If he forgot the dryer sheets and ended up with an armful of staticky towels and socks, he figured that was probably just an ordinary oversight and not a sign of his complete failure as a parent and partner. Probably.

He made sure to pick off every last bit of lint before he folded the towels and put them away.

In the middle of vacuuming one night, Clint turned to find Phil suddenly behind him, and he jumped, startled. “Hey! You’re early.”

Frowning, Phil gestured to the vacuum and mimed a switch. Right. Vacuums were loud. Clint turned it off and repeated, probably a little too loud himself, “You’re home early.”

Phil’s frown darkened. “It’s almost ten.”

Clint blinked. “Seriously?” He looked at the clock, and sure enough the numbers 09:47 glared back at him. In her little mesh-sided castle, Mia was sound asleep, undisturbed by the activity and drooling peacefully onto her big plush eagle. “Shit. Shit, shit, _shit_. Fuck. I must’ve got distracted.”

He went to carefully scoop Mia out of her nest. She grumbled sleepily and stretched, then snuggled down into his arms without waking. Phil said something as Clint brushed past, and Clint had to turn to catch it. “Did she eat?”

“What? Yeah. Of course.” How much of a fuck-up was he if Phil thought he would forget to feed Mia?

Once Clint had Mia settled in her crib with Piggy, Phil stopped Clint with a hand on his shoulder and asked, “Did _you_ eat?”

Clint opened his mouth to answer before he realized that he didn’t remember. He thought maybe he hadn’t, but he wasn’t about to admit that. “Yeah. Sure. Had a sandwich.”

Phil got this look when he knew Clint was lying: a crease in his brow, a twitch at the corner of his mouth, the slightest tilt of his head like he was trying to peer around the wall Clint had thrown up. Clint just smiled his blandest, normallest, Not Craziest smile and gave himself a hard mental kick. Sane people remembered to eat dinner and didn’t have to lie about it. Good parents remembered to put their kids to bed.

“Is everything okay?” Phil asked, and Clint’s pulse spiked.

“Sure. Fine.” He was a professional secret agent, goddammit; he could lie to his boyfriend. “Why? What’s up?”

“You just seem a little... manic, lately,” Phil said. His frown softened, but it lingered in the tightness around his eyes. “I think you’ve done more cleaning in the past few weeks than you have in the last year. What’s going on?”

“Nothing’s going on.” Clint did his best to keep his breath relaxed so that the pitch of his voice stayed even, and he made himself look Phil in the eye and smile. “Got a little extra energy, I guess.”

The crease in Phil’s brow deepened. “After three extended ops on two continents, on top of level one training and full-time parenting? I’m amazed you have enough energy to stand, much less any extra.”

He was right, of course. Clint was exhausted, not just from work, but from the constant effort of keeping up this veneer of normalcy, from cleaning and cooking and fighting to be a good dad despite the inclinations of his nature, from the sparse hours of restless sleep he managed in between shaking, horrible, gut-wrenching nightmares. He was beyond tired, and part of him wanted desperately to crawl into bed and drown in dreamless sleep forever.

Instead, Clint kept smiling and shrugged. “Maybe it’s leftover adrenaline. Who knows?” Figuring now was as good a time as any for another part of the Not Crazy plan, he stepped in close and slid his arms around Phil’s waist, allowing himself a moment to revel in the way Phil’s eyes darkened and his breath hitched. “Wanna help me burn it off?” he asked, low and sly.

Phil’s hands drifted tentatively up to Clint’s shoulders, his ears turning red. “I... A- are you sure? I don’t want to... I mean if you’re not...”

“Hey. Look at me,” Clint said, and Phil’s eyes were so open and so sure that Clint wondered how someone with so much kindness ended up with a life steeped in so much violence. “I’m fine,” he said. “I promise. You’d know if I wasn’t.” He wasn’t, and Phil did know. But Clint had long since mastered the art of misdirection. “Now can I please just take you to bed?”

Phil’s hesitation was just a heartbeat, a flicker of shadow across his features. Then Clint was doing his level best to kiss the doubt away. He guided them into the bedroom, peeling off Phil’s jacket as they went, focusing on buttons and skin and the shuddering pleasure as fingertips dragged along the nape of his neck. He let himself get lost in the rhythm of kissing and undressing and the comforting warmth of Phil’s body against his. There was a sanity in this, an antidote that might take the edge off of Clint’s crazy if only he could get close enough.

Clint swallowed, his throat suddenly empty and arid, and made himself say, “Fuck me.”

Phil dropped onto the bed, staring at him with an open mouth. “ _What?_ ”

“I want you to fuck me,” Clint said. The white undershirt was in disarray, rucked up up around Phil’s waist, and Clint stripped it slowly off of him, running his hands over the wiry hair and lean muscles of Phil’s chest, feeling the knots of scars as he slid onto the bed to straddle Phil’s hips. It should be easy to want this, Clint thought. If there was anyone in the world who could have made it easy, it should have been Phil, but the tight tangle in Clint’s stomach just kept growing.

It took Phil a moment to reply, and his hands rested too lightly on Clint’s hips as the eternal question took shape on his mouth. “Are you sure?”

_No_ , but it was something normal people did. Fucking. It was something people with cunts usually liked, as far as Clint could tell, and plenty of people without cunts liked it, too. Clint had loved everything Phil had done for him so far, and this should be no different. “I’m sure,” he answered, and he tempered the lie with an absolute truth. “I trust you.”

To his surprise, Phil smiled softly and said, “Alright, but not tonight.”

Clint drew back, immediately running through the whole evening to see which part he’d screwed up. “What? Why not?”

“Because it’s late, and we’re both exhausted?” Phil took one of Clint’s hands and kissed the palm so gently that tears stung in the corners of Clint’s eyes. “I want to be able to take our time, not just rush through it and pass out.”

Of course. Because Phil was the kind of guy who would turn down getting laid just to wait and make it better for his partner. Because for some inexplicable reason, Phil loved Clint, which apparently meant that he was bound and determined to make up for a lifetime of bad sex.

Clint forced an expression of bemused exasperation. “ _Fine_. I guess I can wait.”

Still smiling, Phil kissed his palm again, then the inside of his wrist and his forearm and the crook of his elbow, and Clint didn’t know what to do with that. It was something people did in those romantic dramas Hill liked, not in real life, and it made Clint feel uncomfortably like he was being worshipped.

“Cut it out, weirdo.” He pushed playfully at the side of Phil’s head, and Phil let out a huff of laughter, resting his forehead wearily against the side of Clint’s neck. Not knowing what else to do, Clint rubbed his fingers gently along the back of Phil’s neck, because he liked it when Phil did that for him. “Tired?”

Phil sighed, his breath warm on Clint’s skin, then lifted his head to answer. “Long day. Very long day.”

He paused, like there was something else lingering just behind his teeth, and Clint prompted, “Everything okay?”

“Everything’s fine, it’s just... Well. Work things.” Phil gave him a swift kiss on his jaw. “I’ll tell you all about it when I’m not about to start snoring in your ear.”

“Not like I would hear you,” Clint pointed out.

“True, but I’m sure it would still be irritating.” Phil put his mouth against Clint’s ear and presumably started to make an obnoxious snoring noise that vibrated inside Clint’s head.

“Ack! Ugh. Totally irritating,” Clint confirmed, pulling away to rub at his tingling ear. Phil just grinned and kissed him again.

The next day was absolute torture.

All Clint could think about was the night to come. He told himself over and over that it would be fine, that he could get through it, that he might even enjoy it. Phil had shown him how incredible so many things could be, and Clint tried to summon up a spark of hope that maybe this would be one of them. He spent the day in lectures and briefings, his mind shuffling through scenarios like an endless deck of cards until he was dizzy with confusion and dread. 

By the time he made it home, it was all he could do not to rush into the bathroom and vomit. He might have done, but Phil was already there, supervising Mia as she crammed cereal into her mouth and slurped happily at her sippy cup. As Clint came into the kitchen, she exclaimed, "Daddy eat!" and held up her hand to offer him a few sticky pieces of cereal.

At fifteen months, she was already so generous and loving and perfect, and god Clint loved her so much that he nearly started shaking as he bent to press a kiss to the top of her head. "Thanks, sweetheart," he said, taking the least sticky piece of cereal and popping it into his mouth. "Yummy."

"Don't ruin your dinner." Phil handed Clint a bowl of spaghetti. "I worked hard to boil that pasta."

"Slaved over the stove all day, I'm sure," Clint deadpanned. He leaned against the counter and stirred at his food, entirely without appetite. He would have to eat something, if only to keep Phil from thinking something was wrong, but he wasn't sure how much his stomach could take.

He managed to choke down enough to avoid suspicion and snuck the rest into a plastic container when Phil took Mia for her bath. Maybe he'd be able to eat lunch tomorrow, if tonight didn't go too badly.

With the leftovers put away and the dishes cleaned, Clint took to wiping down the countertops so that he didn't have to think about bedtime rituals and undressing and... He wiped the counters twice and Mia's high chair three times and was reaching for the broom when Phil came up beside him and gently put the dustpan back on the shelf and closed the pantry door.

"I think that can wait."

Clint made himself turn and put on a cheeky smile. "Yeah? Something else you wanna do?"

By way of answer, Phil slid his arms slowly around Clint's waist and pulled him close, kissing him with a strange, soft patience. "I want to do a lot of things. Mostly I just want to keep kissing you for a very long time," he said, punctuating the last words with three more kisses.

"Mmm. I like the way you think." It was true. Clint loved every second of Phil's kisses and the way Phil's fingers trailed over his spine. The cold dread in his gut had nothing to do with love or want, just memory and fear.

"And what am I thinking now?" Phil asked. His fingers drifted under the edge of Clint's t-shirt, skimming the tops of Clint's jeans.

"You're thinking about how hot my ass is," Clint replied, and Phil's laugh was a warm rumble that vibrated in Clint's chest. With his lips against Phil's ear, Clint pushed down his uncertainty and said in a low voice, "Now you're thinking about how hot my pussy's going to be around your cock."

Phil shuddered hard in Clint's arms, and Clint could feel the sudden rise in heat coming off his skin. "Are you sure?" he asked, his voice rough. "I mean, is that really what you want?"

"I want you," Clint answered honestly, and for Phil that always seemed to be answer enough.

"Okay," Phil breathed, barely above a whisper. He cleared his throat and added a little more strongly, "Okay. I can do that. I'd like that. I love you." He pulled back, beaming at Clint like he couldn't believe his good luck."God, I love you."

Clint smiled back, almost genuine, and was grateful when Phil kissed him instead of waiting for a response.

The preamble was the same as any other night, a familiar push and pull of hands and skin and slow undressing as they moved into the bedroom. Clint was torn between a longing to delay the act as long as possible and the need to just get it over with. He was still dry when Phil slid a hand between his legs, but the brush of fingertips against his clit sent a pulse of pleasure through him.

"Good?" Phil asked, breathless, and Clint nodded.

"So fucking good." He stripped off his shorts and lay back on the bed, suddenly aware how much of his skin and scars were laid bare, with just his binder to cover the worst of him. Somehow, Phil was still staring at him with dopey adoration. Clint swallowed hard and opened up his knees. "More?"

To his surprise, Phil slithered down and lowered his face to Clint’s cunt, licking slowly between the folds.

"Oh Jesus fuck yes," Clint groaned, and he could have sworn he felt Phil smile. Then Phil sucked hard at his clit, and Clint didn't care about feeling anything but more of _this_.

The sudden pressure against his hole nearly made him jump, but he held himself still and tried to breathe as Phil's tongue pushed carefully inside him. It was nothing like... like what had been done to him before, just a gentle stretch of his muscles, exploratory and strange. Clint felt like he was being pried open, like the bright bow on a present being undone by blunt fingers. He wasn't sure that he liked it, but he could certainly get used to it.

With a last lap at his clit, Phil lifted his head and began to kiss his way up Clint's body. Clint arched into the warm, wet touch, his skin humming with sensation. So far so good. Maybe this would turn out to be as simple and easy as doing laundry, just another chore to be done. Phil seemed to be enjoying himself, at least.

Phil murmured something that Clint couldn’t quite hear, his mouth buried in the hollow of Clint’s throat, and Clint assumed it was something ridiculous and sappy. Phil always said sappy things in bed, and it made a feeling of warm comfort settle in Clint’s stomach like hot chocolate on a January night, not because he believed what Phil said but because no one else had ever cared enough to lie.

Reaching over him, Phil fumbled in the nightstand drawer to produce a new bottle of lube and a condom. Clint raised an eyebrow to cover the spasm of fear in his throat. “You know they gave me that thing so I can’t get pregnant, right?” He resisted the impulse to add, _And I’m clean._

“Can’t be too careful. Plus it makes cleanup easier.” Phil paused to look Clint in the eye. “Are you sure about this?”

Clint made himself roll his eyes. “Little late to turn back now.”

“It’s never too late,” Phil told him seriously. “You can say yes a hundred times, right up until I’m about to come inside you, and I’ll still stop if you say no.”

Clint was going to throw up. Or he was going to cry or laugh or punch Phil in his perfect face. He was torn in all directions, and it was so fucking unfair that Phil would give him a way out _now_. For lack of a better answer, he pulled Phil down into a deep kiss, trying to communicate what little certainty he did have.

“Fuck me.” _Just get it over with._ “Please.”

Phil sat back on his heels between Clint’s spread legs and smeared lube on the fingers of one hand. Then he reached down and slipped one finger into Clint’s vagina. It was barely an intrusion, no pressure and no pain, but it still made Clint tense and threatened to let loose a tide of memories he didn’t want. The second finger only made it worse.

Clint pulled off his hearing aids in the hopes that blocking out the wet sound would make the whole thing seem less real, and he tried not to imagine the sound it must have made the times before when there was already come dripping out of him.

Frowning, Phil signed _OK?_ with his free hand as his other hand stilled, just on the verge of breaching Clint with a third cautious finger.

Clint didn’t trust his voice, so he nodded quickly and moved his hands in circles over his chest, the closest he could get to, _Yes, please, more._

With a smile, Phil leaned in to kiss him and slid in three fingers. Clint breathed in sharply and hoped that it sounded like a gasp of pleasure instead of what it was. Phil’s fingers carded gently through his hair as the other hand worked in and out of Clint’s tight hole, stretching him open with a slow rhythm.

It didn’t hurt, not in any way Clint could express, but he could remember the hurt so vividly that even Phil’s tenderness couldn’t soften the feeling. When the pressure vanished, Clint nearly sighed with relief, until he realized what was coming next. Suddenly Phil’s cock, with it’s ordinary size and the creases Clint was still learning, seemed impossibly huge and gnarled as it distended the translucent condom. 

Phil’s expression was overwhelmed and anxious as he caught Clint’s eye. “Ready?”

_No, no, no. Please stop. I don’t want this._ Clint nodded.

It seemed to take forever before Phil was in position, kneeling between Clint’s thighs, steadying the blunt tip of his cock against the aching hole. Clint breathed in and out, reminding himself that Phil would never hurt him, that this was nothing like the times before, until the pressure became a push became pain, and he fisted his hands in the sheets to keep from trying to crawl away.

The pain faded as his muscles stretched, but Clint still wanted to kick his way free and run away to hide somewhere no one could ever touch him again. He just kept breathing. Normal people didn’t suddenly flip their shit in the middle of sex, and Clint wasn’t about to do anything that would ruin the look of sublime joy on Phil’s face. 

Then Phil started to move in shallow thrusts, and Clint had to swallow down a scream. He must have made some sound, because Phil froze instantly.

“What’s wrong? Are you okay? Did I hurt you?”

“No, no, it just...” _I can’t do this. Please. I’m sorry._ “Just feels weird.”

Phil frowned. “Do you want t-?”

“No,” Clint insisted. If he could get through this without freaking out, maybe there was hope for him to be really Not Crazy. If he could pretend hard enough, maybe he could be just a little bit normal. “It’s okay. Keep going.”

This time, Phil kissed him as the movement resumed, pushing deeper on every thrust. It should have been different, Clint thought. It should have made a difference that Phil was kissing him and going slow and that it was _Phil_ , but Clint could still taste the panic rising in the back of his throat. He shut his eyes and breathed, letting himself drift away. There was no reason to fight or be afraid; he could just go away for a little while, and everything would be fine.

He woke up to hard shaking and thought for a second that he had fallen asleep in the back of one of the circus vans. His last performance must have been stellar if they were letting him have a seat to himself.

It wasn’t until he blinked back to the present, focusing on the white crinkled ceiling and Phil’s terrified face, that he remembered.

Oh. Shit.

Phil started talking rapidly, too fast for Clint to follow, more upset than Clint had ever seen him. Still shaky, Clint fumbled for his hearing aids and was met with a frantic tirade as he slipped them on.

“...then you _weren’t_. And I kept calling, but you couldn’t hear me. And I just... I’ve never been so...” He stared at Clint, wild-eyed. “What the hell just happened? Are you alright?”

“‘M fine,” Clint mumbled weakly. “Must’ve just zoned out.”

“ _Zoned out_?” Phil repeated in disbelief. “Clint, you were _gone_. I thought... You were barely breathing. I had to check for a pulse. You didn’t just zone out, you completely disengaged.”

Clint dropped his eyes and gave a half shrug as he pulled himself up to sit. He’d fucked up. All he had to do was lie back and keep his shit together, and he’d still managed to fuck up enough to scare the crap out of Phil. So much for Not Crazy. “Sorry.” For lack of anything to add, he cast a glance at Phil’s limp cock and asked, “Did you at least, y’know, finish?”

The look on Phil’s face told him that was entirely the wrong thing to say. “No. I didn’t _finish_. I thought you were having some kind of fit. It sort of spoiled the mood.”

Heat rose on Clint’s face, and he hunched his shoulders, trying to hide the flush and stop the sick shame burning up from his stomach. “Sorry,” he murmured again, because he didn’t know what else to say.

Phil ducked his head to catch Clint’s eye, but Clint wasn’t ready to meet his gaze. Phil sighed. “Can you at least tell me why? Christ, just tell me something, Clint. Please.”

Clint’s instinct was to lie, to try and rebuild as much of his defenses as he could manage, but lying to Phil when he was so worried and upset would be a really shitty thing to do. “I thought that... I wanted to show you I could be, y’know, not crazy, and I thought maybe if... if we could... I mean, it’s just normal sex, and...”

“Oh my god.” Phil covered his mouth in horror. “Oh my god. You didn’t... You w-” He broke off, looking sick.

“I’m really sorry.” The apology felt thinner and thinner, even as Clint’s remorse choked him. “It’s not a big deal, I just wanted t-”

“You wanted me to _rape_ you to prove that you weren’t crazy!” Phil shouted. “I’d say that’s a big f- a big fucking... Oh god.”

He bolted off the bed and out of the room, and Clint could hear enough to guess that he was in the bathroom, throwing up. Clint curled in on himself, feeling the wet ache lingering between his legs, and tried to will his whole being into numbness, wishing he could just drift away again and leave behind this mess he’d made.

By the time the light in the bathroom went off, Clint had retreated to the couch, wrapping himself in Phil’s pajamas and a spare blanket. He took out his hearing aids, so if Phil called to him, he didn’t hear it. At some point, he must have slept, because he woke up to find Phil snoring in the recliner, watching over him.

Clint rolled over to bury his face in the soft cushions and thought it would be easier if he could just break.

***

“No.”

“Director, please.”

“Did you not hear me, agent? Because I’m pretty sure I said _no_.”

Phil rubbed at his temples. “He’s going to get himself hurt. If he gets distracted on a mission, he might get someone _else_ hurt.”

“If,” Fury repeated. “ _If_ he gets distracted. According to his mission commanders, he’s one of the most focused, capable operatives they’ve ever seen, and Hill is convinced he’s going to get promoted so fast that levels two through five will hear the wind as he rushes by.”

“I’m not doubting his abilities,” Phil insisted.

“Just his sanity.” Fury levelled a hard glare at Phil. “And his capacity to make his own goddamn decisions about his own goddamn mind.” Before Phil could protest, Fury went on, “Now I’m not saying the kid doesn’t need help, because that little urchin of yours is a whole heaping barrel of issues, but I guaran-fucking-tee that getting him ordered into therapy is the opposite of helping.”

Phil sighed. “But he w-”

“If he won’t go, then you keep your mouth shut and go right on being nice and supportive until he’s good and ready,” Fury told him coolly. “If you can’t do that, then I think you need to do some serious self-examination.”

“Director Fury, I...”

“I’m not gonna order your boyfriend to see a shrink just because you’re worried about him, Coulson,” Fury snapped. “You gonna stand there and argue with me some more?”

Phil would have stayed and argued until his voice ran out if he thought it would provide Clint with some relief, but he knew a lost battle when he saw one. “No, sir.”

“Good. You give any more thought to the west coast assignment?”

The change in topic was abrupt, but surprise wasn’t the only thing that slowed Phil’s answer. “I... need a little more time.”

Fury snorted. “If I’d known you were gonna drag your feet, I would’ve just made it an order.”

“You’re asking me to relocate to the other side of the country. I have a...” _I have a family to think of._ “There are considerations I need to make.”

The look Fury gave him said very clearly that he was only putting up with Phil’s bullshit out of affection. “End of the week, Coulson. I need an answer.”

A week to get Clint talking, figure out what was best for Mia, decide what he wanted, and generally have his mess of a personal life in order. Of course. “Yes, sir.”

Fury didn’t bother to dismiss him, just went back to his work and let Phil show himself out.

Given their schedules, Phil suspected it wasn’t very difficult for Clint to avoid him, though he thought that living together should have at least complicated the attempt. In the past few weeks, when circumstances did require them to be in the same room, Clint had kept Phil distracted with carefully balanced parenting responsibilities and inane tasks. He took to sleeping on the couch with his hearing aids out and his back to the room. Eye contact was fleeting, touch was nonexistent, and he spoke only enough to keep daily life moving forward, never a sound more.

Even Mia seemed to sense that something was amiss. She would squeal happily when Phil appeared, only to make a sound of dismay when Clint exited, as if she was troubled by not having both her fathers in the room at once. Dropping her off at daycare became such such a trial of of screaming and clutching, that Phil asked Kate to come to the facility with her just to have someone she knew on-hand. Kate was cheerfully amenable, but she gave Phil a knowing look and asked very pointedly about Clint. Phil didn’t answer.

Every time he thought he should press the issue or push Clint just a little, he remembered the blankness in Clint’s eyes and the horrible moment he’d gone from making love with his boyfriend to fucking a dead, empty thing. He threw up so often that eating started to seem like a waste of time, not that he had much appetite to begin with.

After two weeks of sickening tension and two days after the ultimatum from Fury, Phil came home late and was surprised to find Clint and Mia in a nest of blankets on the floor, both of them grinning in delight.

Clint had Piggy in one hand and tapped its nose to Mia’s. He held a thumb against his chin and bent his finger, then pointed to the toy.

“Piggy!” Mia announced and was rewarded with the stuffed animal placed in her arms for a hug.

Beaming, Clint repeated the gesture and pointed across the room to Phil.

Still clutching Piggy, Mia bounced in her seat and declared, “Poppa!”

Something entirely new happened to Phil’s stomach, like the angle of the earth had shifted suddenly, and True North was now a tiny toddler with big, dark eyes and a little snub nose. She’d only added a few words to her arsenal of _daddy, eat,_ and _please_ , but her reference for Phil had stayed stuck at looks and pointing until now.

He stood gaping in the middle of the living room, unable to form any response beyond, “Oh.”

Clint made the sign again, and Mia’s excited bouncing intensified.

“Poppa! Poppa! Poppa!” she shouted. Phil decided that he was never ever going to get used to hearing it.

“You wanna bring Piggy to Poppa?” Clint prodded aloud, gesturing with his palms turned upward and grinning like he was going to burst.

Mia scrambled out of the nest and wobbled as fast as she could toward Phil, clinging to Piggy with one hand and holding the other out for balance, until she crashed into Phil’s arms with a squeak of joy. He didn’t remember kneeling down to meet her, but he supposed he didn’t remember breathing, either.

Piggy was starting to become threadbare and discolored, but Phil kissed it dutifully when Mia held it up, then gave her a kiss of her own. “Hello, sweetheart.”

“Poppa!” Her big, bright grin was made of ice cream and starlight and every sweet and lovely thing in the world. “Poppa! Poppa! Piggy! Pwease! Good!”

Phil was fairly certain she was only saying words that she knew would get a reaction, but he couldn’t be fucked to care. He just hugged her tighter, and she giggled happily. “Such a smart girl. Just like your daddy.”

“Daddy!” Mia echoed, squirming out of Phil’s hold. She grabbed clumsily at his hand and started tugging him toward Clint, still sitting in the nest of blankets. “Poppa daddy pwease!”

Clint’s beaming had faded to a small smile, lit by the soft glow of adoration. The longing to make him laugh, to bring the sunshine back to his face, was a physical ache in Phil’s throat. He let himself be pulled along and asked, “Is it... Can I sit with you? Is that okay?”

What light was left in Clint’s expression went dark, and he shrugged. “Mia wants you to.”

Phil was hesitant to accept any assent at face value, especially when it wasn’t really assent at all. Mia was insistent that the three of them sit together though, so he sank onto the blankets at Clint’s side and tried not to notice Clint flinching away.

Mia snuggled into Phil’s lap, content and serene, and held out Piggy toward Clint. “Piggy!”

“Oh, is this for me?” he said lightly. “Poppa gets you, and I get Piggy?”

“Piggy!” she repeated, and Clint took the toy with a tight smile. 

“Thanks.”

“I think that’s supposed to be an honor,” Phil remarked. “Piggy is her favorite, after all.”

“Yeah. Sure.”

The echo of deadness in his voice made bile rise in Phil’s throat, but this was the most feeling he’d seen from Clint in two weeks. “Can we talk? Please?”

“Nothing to talk about,” Clint said, suddenly sharp. “Fucked up. Said I was sorry.”

“You didn’t _fuck up_ , it’s just...” Phil sighed. “You let me hurt you, and I don’t understand what happened.”

“What happened was I freaked out,” Clint snapped. “Dunno why you’re surprised. Happens every other day.”

Phil shook his head, and Mia grunted at the movement. “Not like that. There’s a difference between a minor anxiety attack and full-blown dissociation.”

“Whatever you wanna call it, it’s still freaking out,” Clint grumbled, absently handing Piggy back to Mia. “Thought I could get through it, and I couldn’t. No big deal.”

Phil’s hands clenched reflexively, and he growled, “I swear to god, if I hear you say that one more fucking time...”

“You’ll what?” Clint shot back, and Phil looked away, face heating. “No, really. What are you gonna do? Hit me? Rape me? Kick me out?”

Phil was going to be sick. “I wouldn’t... You know I’d never...”

Like a long-held breath, all the fight went out of Clint in a sudden rush, and he deflated back into a tense shadow of himself, murmuring, “I know.”

“Daddy!” Mia interjected, waving Piggy at him. “Daddy bad! Pwease daddy bad!”

Clint gave a jerk as if he’d been stabbed. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “Yeah, kid. Daddy’s bad.”

He stood unsteadily, his hands shaking hard enough for Phil to see, and shuffled out of the room in silence. Phil wanted to call him back, to reach for him and make him stay, but all the words made a heavy knot in his rolling stomach.

Mia craned her neck to stare after Clint in confusion. “Daddy bad?”

“Yes, sweetheart,” Phil told her gently, smoothing a hand over her dark red hair. “Daddy feels bad.”

She reached out toward the door with her stuffed animal and declared, “Piggy!”

Phil couldn’t help but smile. “That’s very nice of you, but I don’t think Piggy is going to help.”

Frowning, she held Piggy out for Phil. “Poppa bad?”

“Yes. Poppa feels bad, too,” he admitted.

He held both Mia and Piggy close against him until she drifted off to sleep, and he started to feel less like the world was spinning out of his control. It was late by the time he tucked her into bed, and he thought vaguely that they’d have to deal with her grumpiness in the morning. She rubbed sleepily at her tiny nose and gave a small murmur as he pulled up her blanket.

The universe could stop right now and cease all its cycles of creation. It had achieved the perfect being, and there was no more work to do.

He could hear the shower running through the bathroom door. Cracking the door open, he flashed the light once, in lieu of a knock Clint couldn’t hear, and was given a rough reply of, “Come in.”

Clint was sitting in the bathtub with his knees drawn up, hot water raining down on his naked back. Enough steam had built up in the room to fill it with a surreal haze that made Clint’s scars look like ephemeral shadows on his skin. Wordlessly, Phil shut off the shower and wrapped a thick towel around Clint’s shoulders, then sat down on the bathmat beside the tub because he didn’t know what else to do.

After a silence that seemed to last a lifetime, Clint finally said, “You never asked how I got pregnant.”

Phil glanced at him in surprise. The reasons he had never asked were myriad and well-considered, though he had made certain assumptions. The truth, when he allowed himself to admit, was that it had been easier to think of Clint’s pregnancy as a contained thing, belonging entirely to Clint himself and not to any external circumstance, and it was easier now to think of Mia as _his_ , not sourced from some faceless monster lurking in the dark night of Clint’s memory.

“The same reason no one ever asks Fury how he lost his eye,” Phil answered, turning to face him. “You don’t ask someone that strong how they got to where they are.”

Clint gave a bitter snort. “Sure. Totally the same thing.”

“More than you’d think.” Phil hesitated. “I should have at some point, I suppose, but it never seemed important, not compared to everything you were dealing with. After a while, it just...”

“You didn’t want to know,” Clint cut him off quietly. His knees and folded arms covered up his bare breasts, and the small crease of flesh that showed was more of them than Phil had ever seen. Even when he’d been breastfeeding, he’d kept himself covered or gone into another room.

“No. I didn’t want to know,” Phil replied, because lying would have been the worse kind of insult. “I should have asked. I’m sorry.”

“Not your fault,” Clint murmured. “Not your job to know everything.”

Now Phil was the one to make a bitter sound. “It is, actually. Or it was. I guess my standing orders have changed.” Clint frowned in confusion, and Phil took a deep breath. “Fury ordered me to take care of you. He was worried you’d spook and make a run for it, so he made it my job to do everything you wanted and be everything you needed, to make you feel safe and at home.”

Clint stared blankly, the corners of his mouth turning hard. “Is that what this is? Are you playing house so I’ll stick around and be a good little SHIELD agent?”

Phil’s stomach turned. “Of course not.”

“Bullshit,” Clint snapped. “You fucking bastard. Fucking _liar_.”

“Clint.”

“What about Mia?” He leaned forward, snarling in Phil’s face. “Is she part of your job? Does your assignment cover dirty diapers?”

“ _What?_ ” Phil gaped at him. “Christ, Clint, you know I love her.”

Clint’s scowl turned ugly. “Because you were ordered to? Do you get to sign-off once she starts kindergarten, or are you supposed to stick around until I retire?”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.”

“I bet you’d love it if I got killed on a mission,” Clint growled. “Then you could dump her with some nice agents and wash your hands of the whole thing.”

Phil shot out of the room and slammed the door hard behind him. 

He stood in the dark hallway, fists clenched, vibrating with anger like a mis-struck string. He reminded himself that Clint was young and scared and rightfully angry, that all the doubt in the world couldn’t put a dent in his love for Clint or his absolute devotion to Mia. 

In the next room, Mia slept on peacefully, the unknowing center of the universe.

Slowly, Phil turned the knob on the bathroom door and slipped back inside. He thought of leaning against it and sliding down to the floor, but he didn’t want to block Clint’s exit. Instead, he sank onto the closed toilet lid with a sigh. “Fuck you.”

Clint had abandoned his hunched position and was seated on the edge of the tub, towelling himself off with unnecessary force. He didn’t answer, though Phil was sure he caught the message, even if he couldn’t hear the words

Finally, still rubbing the towel over his short hair, Clint began without preamble, “I had a job. Short-term security for a drug runner in Miami. Easy money. Except... except the whole operation, the mules, package prep, everything, it was all kids. Little girls, mostly. Oldest couldn’t have been more than fourteen.”

Phil could see with sickening clarity how this story was going to end, and he wanted nothing more than to cover his ears and run. He stayed, still and silent, and listened.

“So I took down the guards and got the kids out,” Clint went on, as calm and even as if he was delivering a mission report. “Gave ‘em as much cash as I had. Told ‘em to go home if they could and run if they couldn’t. Don’t think they had much of a chance, but it was better than where they were.”

_They had as much chance as you did,_ Phil thought darkly, but Clint was still running the towel absently over imagined spots of water and wouldn’t have noticed him speak.

“Figured they’d go right back to snatching up other kids if I left it at that, so I went after the boss. Small-time, middle-man kind of asshole. Not like taking down a whole crime ring, or something. Shoulda been a snap.” He paused, only for a second, and his whole body rippled as if in preparation for what came next. Phil wanted to reach out, to stop him, to assure him that it was over, but the pause ended as Clint pressed forward in the same calm voice. “They were ready for me. Got the jump and had me tied up before I could put up much of a fight. Boss gave me a nice monologue about betrayal and business and all that bullshit. Said they were gonna cut me up real slow and feed me to the gators. Then they got a look under my clothes, and... and the plan changed.”

Phil had to put his head in his hands and breathed through his nose to keep the vomit from coming up, and he filled his head with safe, white emptiness to stop the images from forming.

“The boss went first.” Clint’s calm tone had taken on that terrible deadness as he recounted the unembellished facts. “Then they took turns. Some of ‘em just fucked me, but there was other stuff, too. One of ‘em almost bit off my tit. After a few hours, I blacked out. Woke up naked in a ditch outside the city, maybe a day later. Dunno if they thought I was dead and dumped me or if they just didn’t care.”

Phil kept a hand over his mouth as bile rose in his throat, but Clint wasn’t finished.

“Broke into a motel room to clean up. Wasn’t until I started washing... washing the blood and th- the come outta me that I... that it hit me, and...” He stopped, shivering, still scrubbing himself with the towel. “Took me a while to get it together. Then I stole a car and some clothes and booked it outta town.”

There were a hundred sharp-edged questions hanging in the silence that followed, but the only answers were the steady scrape of terrycloth on Clint’s skin and the harsh rasp of Phil’s breathing as he tried not to throw up.

It seemed like forever before Clint stood and started pulling on the clothes discarded on the floor. For the first time, Phil could see the knotted scars on his chest and upper back, the thin knife marks around his breasts, and the pale, mangled mess that surrounded his left nipple. Beneath the nausea, cold rage crept up inside Phil’s stomach, and he decided in that moment that someone was going to answer for those marks.

“Didn’t even notice when I missed my period. Hardly ever had ‘em anyway,” Clint said, his voice lifted, as if he had turned to face uphill. “Started feeling sick, but I figured it was probably an infection or something. Then one day I just... knew. Nothing happened, it was just like, y’know, when you wake up and know that it’s morning, even if you can’t see outside. I had to make myself take about a dozen of those stupid tests before I believed it, but I knew down in my bones that I was pregnant.”

_Why?_ Phil wanted to ask. What could have possibly possessed him to keep that foetus alive instead of running to the nearest backalley clinic? How could he have chosen to save anything resulting from that kind of horror? Why had he fought so hard to have a baby that he should have wanted nothing to do with?

A glance at Clint’s face, drawn tight and worn thin, told Phil that those questions could wait. With Clint dressed, Phil stood slowly and moved toward him, telegraphing his intent as he wrapped his arms gently around Clint’s shoulders, holding without pressure in spite of the overwhelming urge to squeeze as tight as he could and never let Clint out of arm’s reach again.

Clint suffered the embrace for a full minute before shrugging Phil off. “Mia down for the night?” he asked.

Phil paused in surprise, then nodded.

“You oughta stay in her room tonight, if you wanna get any sleep.”

He couldn’t begin to imagine the kind of nightmares that would surface after dredging up those memories, but leaving Clint to face them alone was out of the question. He had to stand directly in front of Clint and duck his head before Clint would look at him so he could answer, “I’m staying with you.”

A bitter scowl rippled over Clint’s expression, but it vanished beneath a veil of exhausted acceptance. “Whatever. Don’t blame me when you fall asleep in your briefing.”

Phil could think of plenty of people to blame, and Clint was definitely not one of them. Before he could reply, Clint pushed past him out of the bathroom, stalking toward the kitchen without a backward glance. Rather than follow, Phil gave him his space and instead sat down on the edge of the bathtub where Clint had been just minutes before, feeling at once run down and keyed up.

There was nothing he could do to make this better, nothing he could say to ease the gauntlet of pain and frustration that Clint went through every day. There was no mission plan, no parameters, just a terrible problem that he couldn’t solve. What good was he if he couldn’t even give comfort when Clint needed it so badly?

For want of a plan to enact or an enemy to occupy his frustration, Phil sat on the side of the tub and waited for his own quiet tears to stop.

***

Nothing happened.

Clint spent the whole night waiting for... something, anything, a word or a touch or a look of disgust to let him know that Phil had heard and processed everything he’d said. All he got was a gentle push to come to bed and a warm arm around him when he woke up thrashing, same as any other night. 

The morning was made different only by a pre-dawn call from Hill telling him to suit up and move out, which was becoming a more usual occurrence in itself. An op in Budapest had gone tits up, she told him, and they needed a sniper yesterday.

“Sitwell’s running that op. You’ll be in good hands,” Phil said when Clint repeated his orders. He was watching Clint with exhausted concern and a measure of restraint that Clint didn’t understand.

“Sounds like they got fucked by bad intel, from what Hill said.” Clint dressed quickly, collecting his gear with brisk, steady hands. He was grateful for a job, grateful for a chance to get out of himself and become nothing but the sharp edge of a fine sword. “Anyway, it should be a quick in-and-out. Probably spend more time on the plane than I will on the ground.”

Phil frowned. “No other snipers in the region?”

“Not one that can make the shot they need,” Clint replied, with just the smallest flicker of pride. Hill’s confidence in his skill was better than the wildest applause. Broken or not, he was still the world’s greatest marksman.

“Be careful,” was all Phil said, and Clint had an overwhelming impulse to kiss him goodbye. Not because it something that normal people did, but because he wanted the taste of love and home and _Phil_ on his lips as he set out to face whatever evil the world had conjured for the day.

“I’ll be back before you know it,” he said, forcing a smile that he knew was coming up cracked, but Phil just nodded and let him go with a soft, fleeting touch on his arm.

Before he left, Clint slipped silently into Mia’s room, because her goodbye kiss wasn’t optional. Her delicate brow furrowed as he put his lips against it, and her wispy red curls tickled his nose, smelling of baby oil and tangerines. She murmured in her sleep but didn’t wake, and he carried that memory of her like a photo in his pocket, safe and warm against his heart.

One difficult shot turned out to be six impossible ones, but Clint made them without a problem. It took half an hour of recon, three hours waiting in a blind, and one very near misstep at the edge of a roof, all with Sitwell’s running commentary in his ear until Clint got fed up and started talking back, but he made the shots. 

The only thing to shake Clint’s focus came during the long wait, when Sitwell asked casually over the comm, “ _Got the ankle-biter ready for the big move?_ ”

Perfectly still, except for his frown, Clint answered, “Huh?”

“ _Coulson’s transfer_ ,” Sitwell said, as if that cleared everything right up. “ _I mean, the kid’s two, so I guess the concept of California is a little beyond her, but she’s gotta know something’s going on._ ”

“Sixteen months,” Clint corrected automatically, his head caught spinning around the words _transfer_ and _California_.

“ _Is that really a thing? Can’t you just say she’s one-and-a-half?_ ”

Clint kept still, kept his voice steady and deadpan. “That would be eighteen months.”

“ _Smartass,_ ” Sitwell grumbled.

Any other day, Clint would have smiled.

Between the waiting, the extraction, and the long flight home, he had enough time to run Sitwell’s comment around in his mind until he started forming conclusions. Number one, obviously, was that Phil was being transferred to California, and he didn’t want Clint to know. 

Okay. Fine. They weren’t tied to each other, not really. Phil was free to go wherever he wanted whenever he wanted, with or without advance notice. He didn’t owe Clint anything, much less an explanation for leaving. Maybe the order had come down suddenly, and he hadn’t figured out how to break the news. Sure. Clint was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. Whatever. No big deal.

The thing that Clint got stuck on, the thing that started Clint’s stomach knotting up during the apparently endless debriefs, was Mia. Whatever his other uncertainties, Clint knew in his blood that Phil would never leave Mia, not if he had a choice. _Is the ankle-biter ready for the big move?_ Conclusion number two, then, was that Phil was being transferred to California, and he was taking Mia with him.

_That_ was a big deal.

Because Clint was tied to Mia, inextricably and in ways he barely understood. He could feel the pull of her like his own magnetic north, always pointing him home. The thought of her being far away, of coming home to a place that was empty of her dark eyes and big smile, made him want to hold onto her until his arms gave out.

And yet.

The only person who loved her as much as Clint was Phil, who was both more selfless in his love and infinitely more qualified to take care of her. Phil could give her support and stability where all Clint had was a protective instinct and a few friends who might chip in. Of course, he was pretty sure Kate liked Phil better, and he knew Hill did, so that part might not work out. Given the choice between letting Mia leave with Phil or making her stay with Clint, there was no contest.

By the time he made it home, late the next day, he had nearly convinced himself that it was for the best, that he was okay with it, that everything would be fine. When he slipped quietly into the apartment, he found Phil asleep on the couch, pajamas crumpled and glasses askew, with Mia sprawled across his chest. Both their mouths were lolling open, and there was a tiny spot of drool on Phil’s shirt.

Clint felt like he was breaking in half.

He kept silent as he rushed past, carefully closing the bathroom door so that he could cover his face in cold water and try to pull himself together. He had never fallen asleep with Mia in his arms; he couldn’t, for fear that he might hurt her when his shaking nightmares woke him up, but Phil could. 

Phil could fall asleep with her and talk to her and tell her that he loved her. He could give her nice things and teach her to read and give her advice when she needed it. He might stumble every once in a while, but Clint had no doubt that Phil would continue to be pretty much the best dad ever, which was what Mia deserved. 

When he opened the door into the hallway, he nearly ran into Phil, who was carrying a half-awake Mia to bed. The smile that broke on Phil’s tired face was bright and warm, and it struck Clint like the smell of bread in the midst of starvation.

“Mia, sweetheart, look who’s home,” Phil whispered, angling so that her drooping eyes were turned in Clint’s direction. She blinked blearily at Clint, then nuzzled her face into Phil’s shoulder with a sleepy grumble. 

That, somehow, was the thing that sealed Clint’s acceptance. “Wasn’t gone long enough for her to miss me, I guess.”

“Right now, I think all she misses is her bed,” Phil replied. “Can you get Piggy out of the living room? I think it’s under the coffee table.”

Any other night, the mundanity of putting Mia to bed would have been soothing, but now it felt more like part of a farewell ritual and weighed heavy in Clint’s skin. Going through his own nighttime routine, he could sense Phil struggling to keep an air of normalcy as he regarded Clint with caution.

“How did the op go?” Phil asked with that perfectly pleasant and entirely false neutrality.

In his distraction, Clint had nearly forgotten why he’d been away. “Good. Easy. At least on my end. Point team took some heavy damage.”

“Bad intel?”

Clint shook his head. “Contact sold them out.”

“Shit.” Phil winced in sympathy. “Sitwell?”

“Taking it hard. Pretending he’s not. You know how it goes.” Clint paused before adding, with no attempt at sounding casual, “He asked if Mia was ready for the big move. To California.”

Phil froze so completely that it seemed like every part of his body had simply stopped in its tracks. Clint did feel bad for ambushing him, but this was one of those weeks when Clint’s whole life felt like an ambush. It took Phil a minute before his mouth would work enough to say, “Shit.”

“Shit,” Clint repeated. “Shit. Yeah. That’s about right.”

“Shit. Fuck. Oh my god, I’m so sorry.”

As often as Clint fell back on _no big deal_ , he thought that Phil used _I’m sorry_ even more, mostly to apologize for things that were Clint’s fault. He shouldn’t need to apologize for having a chance to escape. “You were gonna tell me, right?” Clint asked. “You weren’t just gonna leave and...”

“What? No! God, no of course not. I was...” He sighed, running a hand over his face, and only then did Clint really see the weary lines around his eyes and the tight angle of his shoulders. “I was putting it off. We just haven’t really talked about... about this, us, what we are, and a cross-country move is...”

“It’s a big deal,” Clint finished, and Phil gave him a tired smile.

“It’s a big deal,” Phil agreed. “It’s been on the table for a while. Fury gave me til the end of the week to make a decision.”

Clint blinked. “You get a choice?”

“Of course I get a choice. I wanted to talk to you before I made it, but things have been so...”

“Fucked?”

“So to speak.”

Clint sighed. Even if the decision wasn’t official, the fact that Phil hadn’t declined outright told Clint what that decision would be. “Promotion?”

Slowly, Phil nodded. “It’s the same clearance level, but I’d be task lead on a long-term operation and a second-tier officer in the Los Angeles base.”

Ranks and numbers had never meant much to Clint, but he knew that having someone like Phil move up could only be good for everybody. “Raise?”

“Some. The cost of living will be higher, but the salary increase will more than cover the difference, even enough to... to buy a house.” He paused, searching Clint’s face for something Clint couldn’t begin to guess at, then went on, “The LA office is smaller, so there aren’t many agents with children, but the base director recommended an elementary school. Small classes, good security, lots of lawyers’ and doctors’ kids, I think. It’s expensive, but SHIELD offers education stipends, which should help.”

He had looked into schools. Of course he had looked into schools. Clint was still struggling with what foods Mia could eat, and Phil was already planning for her education. She was so obviously better off in Phil’s care that Clint could have slapped himself for not seeing it sooner, and Phil would be able to provide even more without Clint to drain his resources.

“Kindergarten is still a few years off, though,” Phil continued hopefully into Clint’s silence. “So I thought maybe Kate could come along as a sort of live-in nanny for a little while. She adores Mia, and she’d mentioned wanting a change of scenery.”

Clint had to laugh. “You just got saddled with a baby and now you wanna adopt a teenager? You’re really into this dad thing.”

“Kate’s not a teenager, she’s...” Phil frowned. “Technically, yes, she’s a teenager, but she’s an _adult_ teenager.”

“I’m gonna tell her you said that.” Clint managed a grin. This was good. Having Kate around would keep Phil from being overwhelmed, and Mia would have someone like a big sister to look out for her.

“Don’t you dare. She already suspects I’m not the grumpy old man I appear to be.” 

“That’s ridiculous,” Clint said. “She knows you’re not grumpy.”

He had hoped for a laugh, or maybe an amused glare, but Phil dropped his eyes to where his hands sat twisting in his lap. “Just old, I suppose.”

As always, if there was a way to make things worse, Clint would find it. “Not old. Tempered,” he corrected, crawling onto the bed beside Phil. “Established. Worldly. _Experienced._ ” He added a suggestive eyebrow wiggle, but Phil just looked pained.

“Please don’t do that.”

Clint sat back on his heels, frowning. “Do what?”

“ _That._ The funny-sexy thing. It’s not...” Phil swallowed like he was trying to keep down his stomach. “Just don’t. Please.”

Oh. Right. Two days ago, Clint had been prepared for that rejection. Now, in the midst of even greater upheaval, it caught him like a punch in the chest, and he thought his over-worked heart might shatter with the impact. He didn’t let himself shake as he backed away and climbed off of the bed.

“Wait. I didn’t mean that.” Phil shook his head. “I mean, I didn’t mean it however you think I meant it.”

_Right. Because I’m crazy. Must be hearing things._ “‘S fine. Don’t worry about it,” Clint told him lightly, making for the door. “Still kinda wired. Gonna eat something and read for a little. Don’t wait up.”

“Hold on. Clint, please. We need to talk,” Phil said, scrambling after him. “Whatever I said, I’m sorry. Please.”

“Take the job. It’s a good deal,” Clint answered over his shoulder. “There. We talked.”

“Not just about... For fuck’s sake, will you _stop_!” Phil put out a hand, and Clint slapped it away.

“Stop what?” Clint demanded. “What the fuck do you want from me?”

“I want you to stay and have a conversation like an adult instead of running away,” Phil snapped. “I want you to tell me what the fuck is going on in your head, because I don’t have a clue.”

“Maybe I don’t wanna talk. Did you think about that?” Clint growled back. “Maybe I don’t wanna drag out all my bullshit just so you can play therapist.”

“For fuck’s sake. I’m just trying to help, but y-”

“I don’t want your fucking help!” He’d never wanted it, never asked for it, and Phil just kept piling on the aid and pity. “Don’t you get sick of trying to be the hero all the time? Can’t you just leave that shit at work instead of taking it out on me, or is that part of your _standing orders_?”

Phil scowled. “Oh fuck no. Don’t even try to make this about me.”

“Of course it’s about you!” Clint shouted. “It’s about you and your compulsive need to help everyone and fix everything. I can’t say shit to you without it turning into a big fucking thing that you wanna _talk_ about.”

“Do you even _hear_ the things you say sometimes? I mean, do you listen to yourself?” 

Clint rolled his eyes. “No, you fucking asshole. I can’t hear _anything_.”

Phil made an incoherent sound of anger. “You know goddamn well that’s not what I meant.”

Clint threw up his arms. “Of course not! God forbid you ever actually say what you mean. Or maybe I’m just retarded and can’t understand all your big words and normal feelings.”

“Oh my god! It’s like talking to five-year-old!” Phil cried.

“You’re the one that wanted to fucking talk,” Clint snarled, moving for the door. “You don’t wanna, then I guess we’re done.”

“We are _not_ done, you son of a bitch. Don’t you dare walk away from me.” Phil reached out and caught Clint’s elbow, and too many finger-bruises on Clint’s arms made his reaction a foregone conclusion.

Clint wheeled and felt the bite as his fist connected with Phil’s mouth. There was hot blood on his knuckles, and everything seemed to slow down as Phil stumbled back and slid to the floor, staring at Clint in shock.

For one awful moment, Clint stood frozen with Phil’s blood on his hand, and he could actually see the jagged cracks as his life fell completely apart.

He was running before he even realized he was turning away, and he was on the roof before he remembered that he was barefoot, wearing nothing but his sleep pants and vest binder. It wasn’t the same as waking up naked in a ditch, but he had the same bursting need to get as far away as energy and innovation would take him.

He didn’t stop shaking until he fell asleep, wrapped in a stolen coat, huddled in a train car speeding north across the state line.

***

Phil remembered his father as a tall, solid presence. He remembered rough hands and soft white t-shirts that always smelled a little bit like smoke and were covered in coarse black hairs from the labrador that lived at the firehouse. Phil had spent most of his childhood convinced that firehouse one-oh-six was somehow special because it had Lizzy the lab instead of a stereotypical dalmatian.

He had eleven years of memories to draw on in those moments when he felt his father’s absence, and it killed him to think that Mia might not even have two.

“ _It’s not him_.” Hill’s voice was steady on the phone, at odds with the shaking in Phil’s knees as he sat down in relief.

“You’re sure?” He had to ask, had to be absolutely certain.

“ _I’m looking at the autopsy report right now_ ,” Hill told him. “ _Female, blonde, early twenties, but the height’s wrong, the scars don’t match, and there’s enough left of her face for me to say for sure that it’s definitely not Barton._ ”

When a day had gone by without word from Clint, Phil had called Hill, not as an officer but as a friend, to ask if she’d heard from him. After two days, he’d called Kate, who told him not to worry, that Clint would come back when he was ready. After three days, an agent off the radar without orders and not under threat was officially considered missing. After a week, Agent Clint Barton, level one field operative, was listed as rogue and to be treated as a hostile asset on contact.

“ _Barton’s too smart to get caught,_ ” Hill went on. “ _And he’s way too smart to end up getting dredged out of the Chesapeake._ ”

Phil rubbed wearily at his eyes. “I hope you’re right.”

“ _I’m always right._ ”

He managed a huff of laughter. “You’ve got a point, there.”

Fury had given him a grace period before his transfer, considering the circumstances, and had gently mentioned other options when the Baltimore Coast Guard brought in a body matching Clint’s description. The few days between that first report and Hill’s rejection were a blur of nightmares and packing and Mia’s endless crying. Now that the answer had come, Phil couldn’t stall any longer. 

He thought that Mia’s first plane ride should have been an occasion to mark, but she spent most of it wailing miserably while the other agents on the transport glared at them in irritation. One of them snapped at him to shut her up, and Phil gave the man a glance that would have killed anyone who hadn’t survived SHIELD ops training. The man withered in shame and spent the next two hours studying his shoes.

Kate had chosen to turn the move into a road trip and met them at their new house a few days later in her purple VW, windblown and inexcusably cheerful. She greeted Phil with a warm hug and showered Mia with kisses. Mia brightened under the affection, but soon she was back to looking around at all the doors with increasing disappointment.

“Daddy pwease?”

“It’s okay, princess. You stupid daddy’ll be home soon,” Kate promised her, but Mia refused to be soothed. Phil couldn’t really blame her.

“I hope you’re right,” he said, and Kate rolled her eyes.

“God, you two. How did you guys even get to be secret agents?” She propped Mia on her hip with one arm and dragged her rolling suitcase along with her free hand, strolling into the small suburban haven like it was a day spa. “Seriously. Doesn’t it say in your contract that you should make every effort _not_ to be an idiot?”

Phil, who had somehow ended up carrying three more of Kate’s bags, trailed after her, scowling. “It’s not really wise to insult someone who can kill you with a cardboard box.”

“No insult, other dad, just some hard truth.” Peeking through each door, she eventually found the only bedroom not occupied with boxes and sailed in. “I shouldn’t call you _other dad_. That’s mean. And saying _poppa_ would just be all kinds of wrong. Maybe... Uncle Phil?”

“Poppa!” Mia chimed in, pointing her chubby hand toward Phil.

“ _Don’t_ call me Uncle Phil.”

“Fine. Geez.” She dropped gracefully onto the bed, bouncing Mia on her knee. Mia seemed mildly entertained by the whole thing, but only to the extent that it kept her from sobbing. “Oh! I could call y-”

“Agent Coulson is fine,” Phil cut her off. “Or Mister Coulson, if you’d prefer.”

“Awesome. Phil it is.”

He tried to glare at her, but she just grinned back brightly. The echo of Clint’s blinding smile twisted in his stomach like a knife, and he made some half-formed excuse as he rushed out of the room. 

The air on this coast had an unfamiliar quality. Underneath the tang of pollution, it carried the scent of a different ocean, a different orientation along the sun’s arc, but it was fresh enough to let him breathe in and out until the pain had subsided. Never gone, never over, just lessened for a moment.

The LA base was smaller but somehow more frantic, and Phil found himself caught up in the rhythm of it before he could finish unpacking his office. He kept searching for Clint, calling in every resource and favor he could think of, praying for a fragment of a rumor or a reflection on a security tape, but his options petered out as the weeks went by. The leads became thinner, and his updates from Hill became tired and terse.

Finally, she reminded him, “ _You chased Barton for almost a year, and the only reason you found him is that he found you._ ”

“That was different,” Phil tried to insist, but it was an empty protest. “He didn’t know who I was.”

“ _And now he does,_ ” Hill sighed. “ _Now he has two years of training, and he knows exactly how to hide from you, from me, from all of us. Phil, we can spin our wheels forever, but if Barton doesn’t want to be found, he’s not going to be._ ”

She was right. She was always right, and Phil had always known that the search was useless. 

“He’ll be back,” Kate kept saying. 

Mia seemed to share her hope and kept asking “Daddy pwease?” every time someone came through the front door.

"I want to believe that," Phil told Kate one night. "You have no idea how much I want to believe it, but..."

"But nothing," Kate said. "It might take him a while, but he won't stay gone forever."

In the face of Kate’s unwavering certainty, Phil’s temper was wearing thin. “So what am I supposed to do? Sit on my ass and wait? Just carry on like everything’s fine? Like he didn’t...” Like he didn’t abandon us.

Kate gave him a look. “Well, duh.”

“Wah duh!” Mia echoed. She had been curled quietly on the couch while Kate read to her, but the adults’ distraction had left her to entertain herself. Now, she was toddling around the living room with her stuffed eagle, holding up its wings in flight.

Even in his frustration, Phil couldn’t keep from smiling. “What do you know about it, huh?” he teased.

Mia replied with a giggle and a wide grin, hugging her eagle tightly and shoving it’s well-worn beak in her mouth. Phil had given up on trying to stop her from chewing on everything and instead set strategic boundaries about what was acceptable for chewing. Despite his misgivings, the eagle remained on the allowed list. 

“The thing is...” Kate went on. “People love their families, right? Parents, kids, husbands. Family comes first, and all that Christmas movie crap. That’s how it’s supposed to be.”

“I suppose so,” Phil admitted, still watching Mia as she plopped the toy on top of a cardboard box she had claimed as its nest. What families were supposed to be was very rarely what they were, but some of them made a valiant effort, at least.

“So it’s like, there’s the way other people love their families, and there’s how Clint loves stuff,” Kate explained, biting her lip as she searched for the right words. “He doesn’t do anything halfway. It’s all hundred and fifty percent. You don’t love somebody a hundred and fifty percent and just walk away.”

Mia gave the eagle a quick kiss on it’s drool-matted beak and babbled at it in a serious tone. Phil sighed. “Three weeks ago, I would have said the same thing.”

“In another three weeks, you’ll be saying it again,” Kate assured him. “Or maybe, like, five. I don’t know. Clint’s weird.”

Phil couldn’t really argue with that.

The funny thing was that he found the diner by accident. Twice.

Two years ago, after fruitless months on Clint’s trail, he had been reaching the end of his patience. Checking in at the LA office with a report full of _almost_ and _a day behind_ had left him in need of a long walk. The diner was far enough from the office that it wasn’t overrun with agents coming off of three-day rotations and was so perfectly generic that Phil immediately committed the name and address to memory out of spite. He had only just started to enjoy his pancakes when a young man had sat down across from him and remade the universe.

This time, his normal route to work was disrupted by construction, and a lifetime of espionage had taught Phil never to follow marked detours. He ended up on a roundabout path, circling in toward the office, and it was pure, surreal coincidence that a red light brought him face to face with the same generic sign that he had once memorized and forgotten.

The nearest parking ramp was three blocks away, and Phil found himself nearly running the last half block. Inside the diner, no time had passed. The smell of cooking oil and degreaser hit him like a wave, pulling up memories so vivid that he could taste the cheap syrup and see the threadbare seams on Clint’s jacket. 

Phil didn’t make a decision to sit down and order pancakes, but that was what he did. He didn’t mean to look up every time the door opened or to keep glancing out the window, scanning the passing strangers for pale blond hair and summer blue eyes, but he did. He certainly didn’t intend to leave any kind of note in the hope that his random arrival might be tied to a more deliberate action, but when his breakfast was finished, he left behind a square white napkin with the words _please come home._

He started leaving a little earlier for work every day, giving himself a few more minutes for the drive, a few more minutes for breakfast, and never more than a moment to scribble a few words on a napkin.

Kate grumbled about morning people, but Mia seemed perfectly content to greet the thin, gold sunshine and had mastered the art of blowing her poppa a goodbye kiss with both hands, giggling happily at her own talent. Phil blew her kisses back and longed for Clint to see his perfect little girl, to show him her shining smile and say, _Look at what you made._

Kate just mumbled sleepily into her coffee as Phil left a quick kiss on her cheek. Clint’s joke about adopting a teenager flickered in Phil’s mind, and he wished that Clint could see this, too, could see Kate folded into their absurd little family like she was always meant to be there.

After breakfast one day, his note said simply, _The girls miss you._

Phil couldn’t have said when he started thinking of them as _the girls_ , even _his_ girls, but he did. He wanted to write long letters, telling Clint about the faces Kate pulled to make Mia laugh and how the whole house smelled like lilacs and chocolate pudding. One afternoon, Kate took Mia to a baby yoga class and sent Phil a blurry picture of the two of them with their feet tucked behind their heads, both laughing.

He printed out the picture and left it on the table at the diner the next morning.

After two weeks, it became a ritual. On the days he was away for missions, he wrote the notes on scraps of paper and dropped them on street corners or left them between the cushions of sofas in hotel lobbies. Every tiny missive was a variation on the theme _I miss you, I love you, I forgive you, I’m sorry,_ until he started to run out of words and finally just wrote, _This is bullshit._

He prodded absently at the disintegrating edges of his pancakes, remembering Mia’s first night at home, her pitiful crying and Clint’s heartbreaking confusion, and he barely noticed that the door had opened until Clint slid into the booth across from him.

For a moment, Phil was sure that he was hallucinating, that this whole experience was the result of a concussion, that he was in a coma, that he was dreaming, that he was dying and this simulacra of Clint was here to usher him into the next life.

Whatever the situation, the only thing Phil could think of to say was, “Good morning.”

Clint’s mouth twitched, halfway between a grimace and a smirk, and that alone convinced Phil that this was real. “Hi,” Clint said sheepishly. “So, on a scale of one to homicidal, how pissed are you at me?”

Of the cacophony of sensations beating like drums in Phil’s chest, the deep rhythm of his anger was not the first he was prepared to deal with. By way of answer, he gave Clint a cold glare.

Clint shrank down in his seat, dropping his eyes. He seemed to have grown taller in his time away, his shoulders broader and his skin brighter. His eyes were down, but they were clearer and less shadowed than Phil remembered. Wherever he had gone had been good for him, and Phil’s throat burned with bitter hatred for every open road and motel bed that had given Clint the peace their home couldn’t offer.

“Moderately homicidal. Gotcha.” Clint cleared his throat, obviously steeling himself for whatever he had to say. “You’ve got every right to be pissed, and I wouldn’t blame you if you never wanna see me again. Hell, if I was you, I _wouldn’t_ wanna see me again. I’m just askin’ you to listen for a minute, because I’ve got a fuckton of shit to say, and I wanna say it right.”

Phil wanted to hear it. He wanted every word and reason in the hope that some piece of it might make the whole nightmare mean something. The muscles in his throat fought against him, but he managed to shape his mouth into the one question that really mattered. “Why?”

Clint flinched and curled in on himself.

“Why?” Phil repeated. “Please, just tell me why. I understand why you ran, but not... How could you just _leave_ like that? How could you disappear and leave Mia and...” _and me._ “...and your whole life, without even thinking?”

“I had to!” Clint leaned forward, pleading. “I didn’t mean for it to be like that, I just... I had to go.”

“ _Why?_ What was so awful that you couldn’t stand it long enough to say goodbye?” Phil didn’t want to know, but he made himself ask, “Was it me? Was it... Did I push too hard? Was I not...”

“No,” Clint cut him off sharply. “It wasn’t you. At least not... I mean, you didn’t...” He scrubbed his hands over his face. “Jesus christ. I’m fucking this up.”

“You fucked up when you left,” Phil snapped. “The only way you could make this worse is by walking out again.”

Clint looked him in the eye and answered with iron certainty, “I’m not going to do that. I swear.”

“I’ll hold you to that,” Phil warned.

“Good. Good, because I...” Clint sighed. “I’m sorry. For leaving, f- for hitting you, for being such a fucking nutcase. I’m sorry. God, Phil, I’m so fucking sorry. I can’t even say how much.”

Phil had forgiven him weeks ago, but there had been nowhere to place that absolution. Now the apology and its sincerity let that pent-up forgiveness drain away, leaving Phil feeling beaten-up and old. “Tell me why,” he begged again. “I need to understand, Clint. Please.”

Clint stared down at his hands, running a thumb absently over his knuckles. After a moment, he said quietly, “I thought you were leaving.”

Of all the explanations Phil had imagined, that wasn’t one of them. “What?”

Clint’s broad shoulders hunched, and he looked suddenly like the damaged young man who had faced Phil before. “I thought you were gonna leave and take Mia. Figured that was why you didn’t tell me about the job.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Phil’s voice rose before he could stop it, and a few heads turned toward them. He didn’t care. All that mattered right then was figuring out how the hell everything had gone so wrong.

“I know, I know,” Clint groaned. “You weren’t gonna do that. You _wouldn’t_. I just... That’s where my head went, and I got myself into thinking you’d be better off without me.” Before Phil could protest, Clint stopped him. “I know that’s bullshit. At least, I think I know. You’re just, like, the perfect dad and the perfect... perfect boyfriend, and I feel like all I do is make things harder for you.”

“Sometimes,” Phil admitted, and Clint gave him a thin smile. “But not nearly as hard as you make things for yourself.”

The smile darkened. “Well, you’re not wrong about that.”

Anger and joy were still pounding out competing rhythms inside his ribs, and Phil had to steady himself to get through what he had to say. “I want you to come home. I- _we_ need you to come home, but not if we’re going to go right back to where we were. I can’t do that, and... Clint, I’m sorry, but I can’t let you do that to Mia.”

Clint’s face crumpled. “I know. I know, and I don’t wanna. But you can’t just fix me.”

In spite of himself, Phil flinched. “I’m not trying to.”

“That’s exactly what you’re doing,” Clint insisted. “It’s like you think that if you’re patient enough and love me enough that it’ll make everything better, but that’s not how it works. I’ve got fixing to do. I know that. But I’m the one who’s gotta do it.”

Phil didn’t want to doubt, didn’t want to ask, but he had to. “Will you?”

“Yes,” Clint promised. “I will. I’ll do everything I have to. I’ll even go to fucking therapy, but not yet. You gotta let me get there, and you’ve got to stop asking if I’m _sure_ all the goddamn time.”

Phil opened his mouth to argue, and Clint gave him a sharp look. “Fine. I can stop asking if you can stop lying. You don’t have to tell me everything, but I need to know when something’s wrong.”

“Same goes for you,” Clint shot back. “You always do that...” He made a zero with his hand and circled it around his face. “...blank face thing. I hate that. You never get upset or complain or ask for anything. It’s always about if _I’m_ okay and what _I_ want, but getting you to admit you want anything is like pulling teeth.”

“I just don’t want you t-”

“See! There. Right there. That’s exactly what I’m talking about.”

Phil bit down on his tongue to stop his immediate reply. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I could be a little more...”

“Assertive?”

“...about my own needs.”

“Maybe just a little.” At Phil’s look, Clint rolled his eyes and pulled a handful of folded papers out of his pocket. “This? These passive-aggressive little love notes? They told me more about what you want from me than you’ve ever said.” He set the papers on the table, and Phil could see snatches of his own handwriting.

“You found them?” he asked, bewildered. That had been the intention, of course, but he hadn’t believed that the pleading trail of breadcrumbs might really lead Clint home.

“Every fucking one,” Clint confirmed, picking up the top note and folding the corners restlessly between his fingers. Softly, he repeated, “Every fucking one.”

Of course. The truth clicked in Phil’s head like the last piece of a puzzle. “You were following me.”

“Well, what the hell else was I supposed to do?” Clint grumbled miserably. “Didn’t have anywhere to go, and I had to make sure you were okay. Figured you were getting on fine ‘til you started leaving these. Then I just felt like an asshole.”

“You are an asshole,” Phil pointed out, and Clint shrugged blithely in acceptance. A faint, familiar headache had started building just behind Phil’s eyes. “I suppose that’s just my taste in men, though.”

Clint snorted. “Anybody ever tell you your taste is fucking awful?”

“Frequently.” He waited until Clint looked up to meet his eyes and went on, “Kindergarten. I’m not going to push or nag or make you do anything you’re not ready for, but I need you to promise you’ll get some kind of help before Mia starts kindergarten.”

Slowly, Clint nodded. “That’s fair. Yeah. I can do that. I promise.”

Phil paused, stomach tight with memory and apprehension, and chose his words carefully. “While there’s no doubt in my mind it was an isolated incident, and that I was at least partly to blame, I want to state in no uncertain terms that if you ever hit me again, I will do whatever is necessary to ensure it does not happen a third time. Is that clear?”

The color drained out of Clint’s face, and he swallowed hard. “No. No, if I ever do anything like that again, just kill me on the spot. Please.”

“I might,” Phil warned, and Clint just nodded. “And I promise to be less of a mother hen and to trust that you know what you need better than I do.”

Clint raised an eyebrow. “And?”

Phil sighed. “And to occasionally show emotion and express desires, even if I think it will cause conflict.”

“Well, conflict is my middle name,” Clint drawled.

“Your middle name is Francis. I should know, since I’m the one who faked your birth certificate.”

To Phil’s surprise, Clint gave a quiet huff and looked down. “Guess you shoulda known what you were getting into. All complicated and shit, right from the start.”

“Complicated,” Phil agreed, “but worth it.”

After a moment, Clint set aside the napkin, now nearly shredded in his anxiety, and slid his hand across the table until it settled gently on top of Phil’s. For the first time in more than a month, something pulled tight in Phil’s stomach began to ease, like a drumhead slowly let loose from its base. There were still consequences to deal with and complications to navigate, but the warm weight of Clint’s hand told him that there were possibilities, too.

He sent a message to Hill, saying, _Code 269. Asset recovered. Will proceed when ready._

Her response came immediately. _24 hours. And tell that asshole he’s in serious trouble._

When he called Kate to make sure she and Mia were at the house, Kate’s suspicious excitement made him think she knew exactly what was going on. That didn’t stop her from giving Clint a running-start, full-body hug and a good-natured slap on the face the moment he came through the door, saying, “Took you long enough, you friggin’ jerk.” 

Mia was right behind her, barreling across the room with an ear-splitting shriek of joy. Clint scooped her up and kissed her while she beamed and flailed in his arms. She only managed to shout one clear “Daddy!” amidst her incoherent happiness, but it was enough to make Clint hold her tighter and bury his face in her tiny shoulder.

“Hey, kid,” he murmured softly. “D’you take care of your poppa for me?”

Mia just kept squealing and squirming like she was trying to burrow into Clint’s chest. Kate stepped in for another hug, wrapping her arms around them both, and Clint gave her a kiss on her forehead.

“Thank you,” he whispered.

Phil could hear the tears caught in her throat as she answered, grinning, “Shut up, jerk.”

Clint glanced up to look at Phil over their heads, his bright blue eyes shining, and he smiled in a way that made Phil’s heart feel like it had been beating upside down his whole life and was suddenly right-side up. He breathed in the strange California air and the smell of lilacs and chocolate pudding, and he felt, for the first time in too long, like he was home.

**Author's Note:**

> This installment marks the end of the series' first arc. Part 4, which may be a long time coming, will cover the adventure of the Barton-Coulson family over the next few years, and Part 5 will deal with events following _The Avengers_. Stay tuned to [my tumblr](http://shadowen.tumblr.com) for updates, headcanons, and adorable ficlets.
> 
> Thank you so much to all of you for reading and for all the incredible comments. The stories from parents, chatting about the 'verse, and cheering for Clint have been incredibly gratifying and humbling. I really couldn't ask to be part of a better fandom. Y'all are the best. <3

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Running in Sand](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3227855) by [laurenthian](https://archiveofourown.org/users/laurenthian/pseuds/laurenthian)




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